here - College of Arts & Sciences - Bethel University

I am NOT tabula rasa. I'm a critical scholar and pedagogue and that professional
approach influences my critique of the round. If this concerns you and you can't adapt,
strike me. See more below.
Relative importance of presentation/communication skills to the critic in decision-making
:
Fast is usually fine; be clear, organized, and structured. Smart and clean issue selection in
rebuttals is worth many speaker points.
I'm finding that I'm repulsed more and more by arrogance, and my facial expressions in a
round will tell you when that's the case. (My former coaches would find this ironic given
my own approach as a competitor.) You don't have to be "nice," but you should avoid
bashing your opponents over the head with ad homs, with critical theory that they clearly
aren't understanding (e.g., by interrupting a speaker with unnecessary PoIs), or with
unnecessary speed. This is especially true if your advocacy is ostensibly "educational"
and/or "transformative" (i.e., critical). Arrogance in the "service" of education is
extremely unhealthy, in my view. As importantly, arrogance and a healthy critical project
(that moves toward social justice) are mutually exclusive. An arrogant critical advocate
simply inverts and discursively reproduces the oppressor/oppressed dichotomy in a
debate round, which is, of course, bad. If you disagree and/or can't adapt, strike me.
Relative importance of on-case argumentation to the critic in decision-making:
Depends on the round and the other arguments on the flow.
Openness to critical/performative styles of debating:
Critiques (Ks): I consider WHAT is argued FROM my position as a critic. That means
argue what you want; I won't intervene (that is, make arguments for the other side or
dismiss an argument out of hand). At the same time, I'm not tabula rasa--I'm not
evaluating your arguments from some mythical view from no-where
(objectivity). As a critic, I evaluate arguments from a particular perspective, and my
perspective (or critical orientation, in McGee's sense) is informed by my work in
philosophy of communication, critical theory, and cultural criticism (for your purposes,
poststructural, queer, and postcolonial).
I also take critical advocacy (and "the" critical project) very seriously, and self-reflexivity
(think Spivak’s and Bhabha’s contributions) ought to be a part of that advocacy, in my
view. Without it, your advocacy simply reproduces the "invisibility" of the positivist
scholar and the consequent harms in a debate round. You should also understand that I
am not a note-taking mechanism in the back of the room: I expect to be moved, at both an
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