Farr,+James

Last Updated: October 5th, 2010 (tl;dr at the end)

I go by James.

I debated all of my four years of college at the University of Richmond where I am now an assistant debate instructor. While I was coached equally well by Kevin Kuswa and Kelly Congdon, I was known by my fellow debaters as being a ‘mini-Kelly’—albeit far less witty. I began as a 2A and ended my last year as a 2N. On the one hand, I began school studying political science. I get the nuance of many ‘policy’ arguments. I am fairly enthusiastic about politics stories, a good ol’ economy DA, and have a firm understanding of most theory/policy frameworks.

On the other hand, I ended school as a Lacanian analytic philosopher. I have quite a broad ‘range’ as far as what philosophical/antiphilosophical/theoretical authors/arguments with which I am comfortable. I cut many policy arguments for our team, but I almost always preferred the one-off K’s distributed to our squad. I view debate as a dialectical process that prioritizes the persuasion of a third party (me) above an objective cost-benefit analysis. This means that, to win my ballot, your arguments need to draw upon both logos, ethos, and pathos (though not always equally).

I default to a rule-utilitarian perspective on ethics. We should probably save lives at the end of the day, but that doesn’t mean you get to be a racist, sexist, or homophobic jerk about it. That doesn’t mean that I don’t understand the mechanics of weighing non-life based impacts, or that I don’t get the subtle distinction between impacting an argument with extinction and self-fulfilling doomsdays.

I have a terribly dark sense of humor. I’m not really offended by anything, and I don’t hyperbolically feign outrage at things that I nevertheless believe are wrong.

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Style

I am deaf in my right ear. Contrary to what one would think, this doesn’t necessarily mean you should be extra loud for me. Instead, you need to *enunciate* the words of your tags/arguments slower and clearer than you read the actual evidence of a text. So, breeze through the card but walk me through the tag (Oklahoma CJ comes to mind...). In addition, I do have a bias against ‘spreading’ your opponent out of the 2AC. Any more than five or six off-case positions in the 1NC seems to me as somewhat ‘dickish.’ I won’t interrupt your cross-x. Be firm but be polite. I have no qualms with you cutting someone off if they’re bloviating. Cross-x is binding (e.g. no changing the status of the CP post-cx or shifting your alt-text). I generally flow cross-x.

My flow isn’t terrible, but it’s not something I’m proud of either. This means I will probably be listening much closer to the 2N/AR for crystalisation than to the line-by-line of the middle speeches. Argument drops aren’t egregious to me as long as you are honest about dropping it and weigh the drop against another argument that you think you are winning.

I like consistent positions by the negative. The shotgun approach doesn’t appeal to me, ergo play to your argumentative strength rather than to strategic variety. I get that some DAs or case arguments will link to your counter-advocacies, but don’t run a securitization critique right after reading a WoT DA. Quit trolling the affirmative. I like affirmatives with stellar evidentiary support for their 1ac claims. I favor evidence comparison and qualification disputes initiated by the 2ac more than theory or generic ‘answers-to-x’.

If you’re a critical affirmative, I understand it is often difficult to get your authors to mouth the words of the resolution verbatim, ergo I am lenient towards the affirmative on questions of “solvency” if your authors clearly appear to endorse something like what your advocacy claims to be.

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Argument

Topicality: I like topicality. I don’t think critical affirmatives are inherently anti-topical (unless your 1ac makes it clear that you want to be anti-topical). I do think critical affirmatives must be germane with the exception of affirmatives who make framework an up-front issue.

Framework: If you are criticizing the practices of the debate community at large, don’t half-ass some tie-in to the topic. I do believe that both the affirmative and negative have a right to challenge the authority or orthodox of the debate community from within the round. You have a responsibility, as a participant, to be prepared to defend both why you debate and why the implications of the ideology you bring to the room are acceptable. To expect anything less, I feel, is ethically dubious.

I begrudgingly sympathize with the standard policymaking framework. If you have an opponent that you simply are not able to engage with because of the lack of a clear advocacy of some sort of change to the status quo, I completely agree that this goes against the normative expectations of ‘policy’ debate. Your job is to tell me why that breach of the norm should matter.

I can be persuaded to accept any framework the debaters settle upon.

Counter-plans/DAs: Anything goes. Winning a no-link argument means there’s no risk of the impact—that’s it. CPs should probably have a solvency advocate, regardless of how generic or not they might be. Affs should make an issue of counter-plans that are net beneficial but have no solvency advocate—I think that is a bit cheap.

Critiques: I am well read in a wide range of authors. I am a dogmatic Lacanian-Badiouian, with a deep sympathy for the Slovenian school. There are no authors for whom I imagine having a problem voting or understanding.* Go ahead and have a Zizek battle at your own peril—I’ve read and own (nearly) all of his published works. I used to run Der Derian, Heidegger, Agamben, Baudrillard, and Freudian/Jungian authors quite frequently. (Mis)read an author at your own risk.


 * One exception (temporarily) is Deleuzian arguments. Deleuze's (and Guattari's) vocabulary is one that hasn't yet been 'deterritorialized' for me.

Case Debate: I will vote against a non-inherent affirmative if you point it out (and generate a coherent argument as to why inherency is prima facie issue). Case turns are defensive unless they turn and outweigh the affirmative impacts.

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Plagiarism

From the CEDA Constitution: “The primary creation of argument and the primary research effort in CEDA debate must be the student's. .. . Responsible use of evidence includes accurate recording and documenting of material, as well as avoidance of plagiarism, misrepresentation, distortion, or fabrication. . . . Claiming another's written or spoken words as one's own is plagiarism, a very serious offense against responsible scholarship.”

I will not evaluate arguments that are word-for-word plagiarized from other teams/years of competition. Copying another team’s work off the case-list and running it as your own (without so much as re-tagging it or crediting the original file's author), whatever your motivations may be, is academic thievery. The caselist and other resources exists to facilitate--not supplant--your individual research obligations. **Not cool.**

This **does not** include files produced by your own squad.

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TL;DR

Any kind of argument is acceptable to me. I was a philosophy/politics major who loved both analytic and continental philosophy, so I’m just as likely to vote for T/‘policy debate good’ as I am for Heidegger or wacky ‘Bard-shit.’ Play nice, not because I particularly care, but because I am ethically obligated to intervene if you are disrespectful and/or subjectively violent towards one-another.