This is probably old news too many, I heard this card for the first time in a debate I judged today (though I think I remember another old spanos email card floating around that said something similar) and I find it pretty annoying/ill informed. What do people think?
William Spanos in Joe Millers’ book Cross-ex (pg. 467) 2004
Dear Joe MIller, Yes, the statement about the American debate circuit you refer to was made by me, though some years ago. I strongly believed then –and still do, even though a certain uneasiness about “objectivity” has crept into the “philosophy of debate” — that debate in both the high schools and colleges in this country is assumed to take place nowhere, even though the issues that are debated are profoundly historical, which means that positions are always represented from the perspective of power, and a matter of life and death. I find it grotesque that in the debate world, it doesn’t matter which position you take on an issue — say, the United States’ unilateral wars of preemption — as long as you “score points”. The world we live in is a world entirely dominated by an “exceptionalist” America which has perennially claimed that it has been chosen by God or History to fulfill his/its “errand in the wilderness.” That claim is powerful because American economic and military power lies behind it. And any alternative position in such a world is virtually powerless. Given this inexorable historical reality, to assume, as the protocols of debate do, that all positions are equal is to efface the imbalances of power that are the fundamental condition of history and to annul the Moral authority inhering in the position of the oppressed. This is why I have said that the appropriation of my interested work on education and empire to this transcendental debate world constitute a travesty of my intentions. My scholarship is not “disinterested.” It is militant and intended to ameliorate as much as possible the pain and suffering of those who have been oppressed by the “democratic” institutions that have power precisely by way of showing that their language if “truth,” far from being “disinterested” or “objective” as it is always claimed, is informed by the will to power over all manner of “others.”
This is also why I told my interlocutor that he and those in the debate world who felt like him should call into question the traditional “objective” debate protocols and the instrumentalist language they privilege in favor of a concept of debate and of language in which life and death mattered. I am very much aware that the arrogant neocons who now saturate the government of the Bush administration — judges, pentagon planners, state department officials, etc. learned their “disinterested” argumentative skills in the high school and college debate societies and that, accordingly, they have become masters at disarming the just causes of the oppressed. This kind leadership will reproduce itself (along with the invisible oppression it perpetrates) as long as the training ground and the debate protocols from which it emerges remains in tact. A revolution in the debate world must occur. It must force that unworldly world down into the historical arena where positions make a difference. To invoke the late Edward Said, only such a revolution will be capable of “deterring democracy” (in Noam Chomsky’s ironic phrase), of instigating the secular critical consciousness that is, in my mind, the sine qua non for avoiding the immanent global disaster towards which the blind arrogance of Bush Administration and his neocon policy makers is leading.
Please all, let's respect spanos's wish and not read his evidence in debate anymore.
That's the wrong cite, the Joe Miller guy posted it on Cross-x.com, not in his book: http://www.cross-x.com/vb/showthread.php?t=945110
And here's the other card:
Spanos 2002 (William V., “Fwd: Re: Posthumanism's Place,” February 26, http://www.ndtceda.com/pipermail/edebate/2002-Feb…
Dear Matt, I have been aware of the way high school (and college) debaters have mangled my work for quite some time now. I don't know how my books got into that circuit. My intentions in writing them was/is not to appeal to debate. The very idea of institutionalized debate–where it doesn't matter at all what side one takes–is anathema to my way of thinking. In fact, you could say that my books in a fundamental way are intended to demolish the phony "pluralistic" thinking that kind of debating fosters. Thinking (and the language we use to make it manfifest), in other words, should make a difference in a world, especially in the United States, which calls itself civilized and free but in reality is barbarically corrupt and unfree, which always invokes the language of justice to conceal the terrible injustices it perpetrates at home and everywhere in the world, that celebrates the individual while reducing him her to what Foucault calls useful and docile body and Heidegger, "disposable reserve. And this is precisely what the kind of "thinking" debating (as practiced in debate tournaments) IS NOT.
But the fact is that, like or not, my work has been appropriated to this debate scene. And there's not much I can do about it. Who could are people like you, who seem to be aware of the fact that there's something rotten in the debating state Denmark, that it actually violates the very essence of the kind of thinking I am struggling to articulate. So, I understand your renunciation of high school debating. But if you really want to make your opposition felt, you should return to the debate circuit and make it your purpose to challenge the reductive distortions your debater colleagues impose on my kind of thinking.
Silly Spanos. A large portion of the debate community would probably have never considered engaging in philosophy or the arguments Spanos considers important absent debate. It's pretty arrogant to think that you're so right that there is no room for taking the opposite position – let alone the fact that that tactic is a more accurate description of how those Spanos criticizes go about their oh-so nefarious deeds.
@Tom Tom
While I don't agree with Spanos' absolute condemnation of the activity, I think it's unfair to characterize his argument as "not letting people take the opposite position," but more like some Greeks reaction to the sophists, who argued for the sake of arguing, or merely to prove that they could. I think Spanos is saying that people who simply read his argument with no coherent understanding of it (if you read the email he's responding to on edebate, it makes this a little clearer) perpetrate a "disinterested" intellectualism that sanitizes political thought. He tars the activity with a broad brush, to be sure, but I don't think he would agree that schools who effectively and accurately interpret his work, like the numerous examples referenced in that cross-x.com thread, are "profaning" or "mangling" his work. It's only when we have no stake in what we say, and assume that that discourse has no consequences, that when we go out into the real world and the things we do and say have real political clout that the Karl Roves and Dick Cheneys are born from debate. It's reductionist to interpret this card as "Spanos says you shouldn't read his ev," because he strikes at a broader issue than that, the notion of objective scholarship, which makes these cards much more useful to performance/project debaters.
Disclaimer: I'm just defending Spanos here for the sake of debate (ironically enough), I agree that he's wrong/ill-informed about the way the debate community actually functions, but I don't agree that this evidence has no utility whatsoever.
Amen Roy.
I fundamentally disagree, i think that this piece of spanos evidence speaks truth to the way that the debate space functions.
Their are a few obvious examples of this. 1- An actual example from the Blake Tournament, 1ac was a critical affirmative that attempted to stand in solidarity with those who are impoverished via singing the blues. Articulation out of the block on a malthus-like argument is lets just kill all the poor people. My question is how does this not exactly prove what Spanos is talking about when he says it doesn't matter what position you take.
2- "I am very much aware that the arrogant neocons who now saturate the government of the Bush administration — judges, pentagon planners, state department officials, etc. learned their “disinterested” argumentative skills in the high school and college debate societies and that, accordingly, they have become masters at disarming the just causes of the oppressed." This portion of the evidence is especially true in the context of conditionality. 1nc is states T-poverty, States counterplan, politics, and a cap critique(Link- use state, alt = reject). Capitalism links to states, capitalism links to the rhetoric of the politics disad, Capitalism links to the topicality (T creates a formalized structure around our debate space, most likely a link to the warrants of why state action is bad). The counterplan and capitalism are both probably conditional, which is another example of disinterested politics. Logically, if i go for states then i have shown disinterest in cap and thus i just got rid of it.
*disclaimer – Most of this is obviously up to debate within the round, these were just examples that i could think of off my head.
@Tyler Snelling
1 – debate incentivizes researching arguments and understanding what you're arguing – as a general trend people who run stupid arguments like malthus are going to win fewer rounds than people who win warranted arguments.
Obviously things like politics are contrived but regardless the research which goes into these arguments is beneficial. The very process of debate means that it does matter to some degree what position you take – whoever does the better job of defending their position will win. This process is not perfect and things like malthus and spark win rounds but as a general trend it tends towards an increased awareness of important issues.
This is true especially when comparing debaters to non-debaters as a whole. The idea that some positions are fundamentally wrong and should not be ever argued for is the same logic which the people spanos criticizes use to justify the status quo. Arguing for the sake of arguing can be a good thing.
How many people in the debate community would have had a serious intellectual engagement with things like criticism of capitalism, heidegger, nietzsche, or any other philosophy without debate? Whether or not one agrees with the arguments made by these philosophers is largely irrelevant – debate increases exposure to these arguments and allows for the possibility that people consider political or philosophical stances they would not have otherwise.
A year ago I had a very limited understanding of what capitalism is and even less of an idea of why it could ever be bad. A year later, I have extensively engaged the subject, perhaps more on the cap bad side than good, but I have engaged both sides nonetheless. The fact that I could run cap bad one round and run cap good next round and have no qualms going for the opposite argument is largely irrelevant – I have increased my knowledge and understanding of both sides of the issue through this process – and when/if there reaches a point where I could put that increased knowledge to practical use, I would not pick what i disagree with because I could run both sides in debate.
It seems pretty clear that debate opens up the possibility for discussion of things that the general population largely takes as a given. Regardless of what side you take on any of these issues (and believe me, I have a lot more reading and thinking to do before I believe I could adequately defend either side of an issue like cap good/bad in a non-debate setting and not feel qualms that I could very well be dangerously wrong,) the idea that this process should not be available or that flexibility should not be encouraged is flawed. And, ultimately, the opposite of what one should advocate if he/she wishes to question certain aspects of how politics is conducted now.
Debate is even open to the introduction of arguments about how the current political system may or may not be baised; may or may not favor certain viewpoints over others – Epistemology.
2 – that conditionality allows for inconsistencies (or that open debate allows for bad arguments) is not a reason debate is bad – it is a reason certain arguments and inconsistencies are or could be bad. Debate allows for the space to argue whether or not these are good or bad far more than almost any other forum of discussion.
Ultimately, even if debate incentivizes going for the arguments one has the best chance of winning but not the truest ones – that doesn't stop debaters from learning in the process about politically relevant issues and knowing which arguments actually have more bearing on reality than others.
(1) A shorter version of that card does appear in the book Cross-x, but this longer version isn't there as Vinay points out.
(2) Roy, how do you get from what Scott posted to Spanos not wanting his stuff read in rounds?
(3) It is really obvious this is a framework card, and that Spanos is interested in changing the way we conceive of debate. He understands the power that debate has for producing subjectivities, and he is worried that right now debate produces people who are more like Karl Rove (as we all know a former debater), or perhaps worse one of the dreaded experts that both Said and Spanos decry in their works, and not people who are radically going to reshape the world in emancipatory ways. In this way he is paying debate a lot of respect, but respect often includes a desire to see change. Spanos is just as critical of the university, but he certainly is a part of that! Criticism is not being against the activity, but rather certain formations of it.
I hear this Karl Rove example all the time, and it seems like the dumbest thing ever. First, I don't know where he debated or when. He went to college at the University of Utah. I've personally never heard of a debate team from that school, but whatever. (EDIT: just looked it up — some NPR article says, "In high school, Rove was a skilled debater and was elected president of the Student Council." … so I guess student council presidents are the devil also) I've just heard it asserted by teams that like to make the debate bad argument. Second, an anecdote is not an argument. Karl Rove was a debater therefore debaters are evil is just an asinine statement. Third, there are plenty of counter anecdotes of pretty sweet people who debated and are now awesome:
Neal Katyal – Defended Gore in Bush v. Gore, and defended the Detainees from Gitmo in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld – Debated for Dartmouth
Laurence Tribe – one of the foremost constitutional scholars of our time, has argued before the supreme court over 30 times – Debated for Harvard
Spanos is clearly a dbag, I'm not 100 percent sure he doesn't want his evidence used in debates but hes quoted on edebate for saying
http://www.ndtceda.com/pipermail/edebate/2002-Feb…
"Dear Matt, I have been aware of the way high school (and college) debaters
have mangled my work for quite some time now. I don't know how my books got
into that circuit. My intentions in writing them was/is not to appeal to
debate. The very idea of institutionalized debate–where it doesn't matter
at all what side one takes–is anathema to my way of thinking."
Now I'm sure the hippies will say oh but we should use this to challenge the structures blah blah blah blah blah, well if I don't like the game being played I don't mind picking up my ball and walking away. I had a longer rant about this, I don't really care I don't judge much Spanos anyhow, but I'm sure we mangle most authors too.
I'll try to answer Whit later (I've got a review of H&N's Commonwealth I need to finish writing tonight first).
Roy, as someone who, you know, actually knows Bill Spanos I'll tell you right now he's not a dbag, even if he is in the tank for Heidegger and kinda a humanist. He's a good guy, and a smart guy, and a sincere guy. When I took classes with him I was actively involved with coaching Binghamton, and he was knew it and never gave me any crap about it. He even occasionally asked how the team was doing.
Now, I know what he wrote (back in February of 2002), but I think in his correspondence with debaters he has been pretty specific about about his objections, and I think he has since the 2002 email been pretty specific about telling people to stand in the activity. He doesn't like the concept of arguing to just win, which is an obvious criticism to both switch side (in a traditional sense of the term), and negation theory. He also believes the subject position of an policy expert is problematic (a point he takes up more specifically in his work, particularly in his book on Said). Now, I am not saying you have to agree with him, and these are clearly positions written from outside of the activity. But they aren't get out of the activity or don't read my cards, they are fairly straightforward framework cards, and his position has obviously crystalized since 2002. I have no clue how any of this makes him a dbag, except maybe his original response.
Now, I know that the people who think this is an amazing enough activity to encourage others to participate in it, to stay in and try to challenge and change the aspects they disagree with, are somehow the "debate bad" crowd. That's never made sense to me, because any disagreement aside, most of these people clearly love debate and affirm it as a life changing and important experience. And I know somehow those people who are likely to call debate simply a game and say that if it changes to something they don't like they'd just leave are somehow "debate good." So, I know I'll just be a hippy, or whatever, but this love it or leave it attitude is a crock and a sham, whether it is about calling protestors unpatriotic or refusing to believe that anyone who has problems with some practices of this activity actually care about it.
Btw, my guess is you do care about this activity, and I kinda think you'd work to make it what you'd think it should be if it isn't that. But if not, then whatever.
Roy is obviously a reactionary neocon zionist, however
"It is really obvious this is a framework card, and that Spanos is interested in changing the way we conceive of debate"
This and your later args are clearly more informed by your experience then what is written in the 2 emails discussed in this thread- none of the nuances etc that you discuss are evident in them.
"his position has obviously crystalized since 2002"
cite?
Meh, Bill is a good guy, and also old and dying. I get a bit defensive with people calling him a dbag. And yeah, you're right a lot of this is colored by my personal interactions with him.
But from what you quoted:
"This is also why I told my interlocutor that he and those in the debate world who felt like him should call into question the traditional “objective” debate protocols and the instrumentalist language they privilege in favor of a concept of debate and of language in which life and death mattered. [… ]A revolution in the debate world must occur. It must force that unworldly world down into the historical arena where positions make a difference. To invoke the late Edward Said, only such a revolution will be capable of “deterring democracy” (in Noam Chomsky’s ironic phrase), of instigating the secular critical consciousness that is, in my mind, the sine qua non for avoiding the immanent global disaster towards which the blind arrogance of Bush Administration and his neocon policy makers is leading."
That seems rather obvious he thinks debate is important. A revolution must occur, because it is only in debate that we can instigate the type of critical consciousness that is necessary for avoiding disaster. That seems rather powerful language, and it doesn't strike me at all sounding like he believes that people should leave the activity, or not read his evidence. He thinks people should, but that scholarship and research should not be disinterested, but militant.
Now, as I said before, this is an outsider's perspective. We haven't made our activity particularly transparent to those outside of it, and there are good reasons to assume someone with only a passing familiarity with the activity might not know what is best for the activity, etc.
Still, I am not sure how it is not obvious this is just a framework card. Here's the tag:
Disinterested and objective forms of knowledge production are creating an immanent global disaster. Only by fostering a secular critical consciousness can we avert this.
Spanos 2k4.
This might be something you disagree with, whatever. But it seems rather straightforward debate-ish type argument to me.
In 1995, I became interested in Professor Spanos' work through a HS teacher who studied him in graduate school as well as a debate friend who read his arguments in debates. I'd heard many criticize Professor Spanos as a Nazi sympathizer because of his affinity for Heidegger (especially Tim Alderete). In my email correspondence with Professor Spanos in 1997, he was irritated at the use of his work in academic debate because he felt it was misapplied. He also felt that he criticism he'd received as being sympathetic to nazist beliefs was deeply unfounded. Strangely enough, it seems that Professor Spanos' willingness to engage in extended discussions with debate types is something that's continued his legacy in debate. His position about debate has changed over time — moving from his view that debaters are misinterpreting his work to debaters need to challenge debate's assumptions from within.
No matter what you think about Spanos' work, we have to remember one thing… If you devote your life to something you believe in so dearly and feel that others are doing damage to that work, you'd be defensive too.
michelinmassey
<blockquote cite="#commentbody-2064">
Michelin Massey :
If you devote your life to something you believe in so dearly and feel that others are doing damage to that work, you’d be defensive too.
michelinmassey
lol…people making debate bad arguments would do well to reflect on this statement.
<blockquote cite="#commentbody-2064">
Michelin Massey :
In 1995, I became interested in Professor Spanos’ work through a HS teacher who studied him in graduate school as well as a debate friend who read his arguments in debates. I’d heard many criticize Professor Spanos as a Nazi sympathizer because of his affinity for Heidegger (especially Tim Alderete). In my email correspondence with Professor Spanos in 1997, he was irritated at the use of his work in academic debate because he felt it was misapplied. He also felt that he criticism he’d received as being sympathetic to nazist beliefs was deeply unfounded. Strangely enough, it seems that Professor Spanos’ willingness to engage in extended discussions with debate types is something that’s continued his legacy in debate. His position about debate has changed over time — moving from his view that debaters are misinterpreting his work to debaters need to challenge debate’s assumptions from within.
No matter what you think about Spanos’ work, we have to remember one thing… If you devote your life to something you believe in so dearly and feel that others are doing damage to that work, you’d be defensive too.
michelinmassey
I remember this: I had voted for Spanos in the Finals to the Iowa novice nats. I was posting something about that on CX-L or Cross-Ex.com (can't remember which). I noted that it was surprising that I voted for Spanos and Takis (who ran spanos every round) voted against it.
I got an email from someone who I thought was a Student, asking "Why is it surprising?" In my response, one of the things that I said was "Spanos denies that Heidegger participated in the Holocaust. This is holocaust revisionism" – something like that.
I later found out that it wasn't "some student" but a coach, who then forwarded my under-argued, two line response to Spanos himself, without asking me or telling me that he intended to. I probably would have chosen my words more carefully, and been Much more specific, had I known that I was going to be ambushed and speaking to the man himself.
In his response to Massey, Spanos was completely incapable of articulating an answer. He basically said "Much of what I've written rejects genocidal practices" ignoring that in addition to that, he Denied that Part of the Holocaust happened. Which is why I called him a Holocaust Denier. (I am not 100% certain that I used the word "revisionist" vs "sympathizer", but I am pretty sure I said "revisionist" – it is ten years ago.) This is the part where he calls me an idiot, for your entertainment:
"———- Forwarded message ———-
Date: Mon, 12 Apr 1999 10:10:23 -0400
From: William Spanos
To: Michelin Christopher Massey
Subject: Re: another question about heidegger
Dear Michelin, the accusation that I am a holocaust revisionist is uttely rediculous. What have I written anywhere that would suggest I'm do that? Only an idiot incapable of reading come come to that conclusion. Tell your friend to read my book, "Heidegger and Criticism" or anything esle I've written. Is to defend Heidegger against those who identify him with the Nazi's grotesque extermination project automatically to be condemned a Nazi sympathizer? It's that kind of reading that I call fascist, since it obliterates–let's say exterminates everything (and there's alot it)–I've said to the contrary." [SIC] [SIC] [SIC]
As Scotty said in another thread – it seems that Post Modernists (or a Post Humanist in this instance) are the least capable of seeing that they don't get to decide the impact of their own rhetoric.
Whit,
Zing!
Alderete,
Do you put on your resume "1999- called idiot by Spanos after calling him Hcaust denier"?
I'm pretty sure this was on an episode of the simpsons once.
I'm late getting back to this thread, but to clarify from a long while ago… I never intended to ambush Alderete. Actually, my intention (in my correspondence with Spanos for my own purposes) was to gauge his reply to the notion that Spanos is a holocaust denier. I agree with Alderete that the reply was pretty incomprehensible. I understand Spanos' defensive posture about debate, but as an academic, he does have the responsibility to reply to his critics.