Negating vs. the Kritikal Affirmative

Kritikal Affirmatives

These affirmatives follow the same structure as the kritikal negation but instead of critiquing methodology or assumptions of the affirmative, they critique

·      The resolution directly, or rather, why they shouldn’t have to defend it

·      Debate itself or the structures inherent to it that lead to their theory of power

·      Neither, instead simply injecting a theory of power and its higher order of importance

In this guide, we’ll go through the main answers to kritikal affirmatives and preempting the responses the affirming debater will make to answer them.

Here are the three most common strategies (N.O.T.E - We will either have an intermediate or advanced guide for most of these if you want to go more in-depth in these arguments)

1. Topicality

Topicality is a theoretical argument used to punish kritikal affirmative’s for being non-topical, or not addressing the resolution as intended. The first part of the shell is the interpretation or constraint on topicality; here’s a common interp:

Topicality is a strategic position because instead of having to engage with the theory of power and links debate, one can simply make a claim about burden structures – side-stepping any offense below the theory layer. Additionally, the burden structures around what constitutes a topical advocacy can be narrowed further by defining key words such as how... 

Leveraging your standards as disads to their model of debate in the 2NR will also be essential, your standards should provide a flexible toolbox; for instance, many K’s will attempt to go for ‘try-or-die’ – do the K or bad stuff happens – and strategic standards can turn that. 

Here, fairness is leveraged as a means of flipping try-or-die, because doing the K to aid one group uniquely harms another inside the debate space – as long as fairness comes first, this turns the K. But that’s hardly a given, because topicality is such an ubiquitous argument most K’s will attempt to bait it out and then leverage their theory of power as a disad to the shell, such as:

The important thing to note is that most of these disads still operate around a stasis point set by the topicality debater, meaning winning the disad is typically just proving that this specific instance outweighs - especially since most K-aff frameworks are truisms like ‘racism bad.’ It really just becomes a game of finding whether procedural fairness in this instance is a pre-req to doing the K’s method or not; if the topicality debater loses primacy on the shell they’ve lost the debate. 

2. Academy K

‘Ever heard of fighting fire with fire? Well that’s exactly what the academy K does; the thesis of the K, roughly speaking is that by voicing critiques of capitalism, settlerism, security, etc. the K team has subjected critical resistance to the archival power of a capitalist academy that ultimately entrenches the systems of oppression the K critiques by positioning them in a mediated space.

The K is strategic because it questions the choice of reading the K in debate, instead of contending with the core assumptions of the kritik. However, a common response will be that subjectivity shift – or that debating these positions can change our political beliefs as people – is proven. Answering subjectivity shift is usually a matter of proving the lens through which subjectivity is altered is inherently flawed, which also extends into the cruel optimism DA because the K team has fabricated images of suffering it pretends it can solve to trade the academy for the ballot. Sadly, the academy K does technically turn itself.

3. PICs

This is the more policy-oriented approach to answering the kritikal affirmative, also the most contingent on the K-aff fronting a centralized method. These are quite strategic however as it’s easier to go for marginal gains over the Kritik instead of contesting the entire thing, and considering how almost every kritikal literature base will diverge along multiple theories of the ideal method, there are an almost infinite amount of these for every K which makes them less predictable than something like T-FWK. 

The disadvantages of going for the counterplan into a K-aff is that it could be a micro-aggression according to the K, for instance, PIC’s into a settlerism K is seen as co opting their scholarship in a similar fashion to the colonizers who stole indigenous identity and culture – leaving them with nothing. Thus, the counterplans that can front an alternative method are often more effective as they are paradigmatically aligned with the affirmative.

4. Cap K

Check out the Cap K guide! It covers how you would run this argument against the K-AFF. The Cap K essentially argues that class struggle is the root cause of oppression as all systems are structured along relations cohered by the notion of utility.

Last Words

Although topicality, the academy K, and counterplans represent some of the most mainline ways of negating a kritikal affirmative, there are a few other important arguments worth mentioning

·      Truth Testing: a role of the ballot that aims to produce a binary burden structure along the lines of the aff must prove the truth (deny falsity, maintain as true etc.) of the res and the neg must deny their truth claims - all offense is then filtered by definitional applicability to the res, i.e. tricks/definitional a priori’s, before evaluating substance – this is typically leveraged as a way of excluding the K, because it first affirm its own truth value which cedes jurisdiction to this paradigm and associated framework tricks.

·      Solvency Deficit: a pretty straightforward premise: the aff cannot solve its own links. If the K is pre-fiat rejecting debate, the argument can be made that because the K is communicated normatively in the debate space – it can’t solve for the abuse that already occurred by participating in the round. This also necessitates winning no subject formation or subjectivity shift, that is, the K won’t impact the broader community or debaters after this round.