DEBATES ARE STORIES ABOUT THINGS THAT CHANGE IN TIME:CIVIC ENGAGEMENT WITH THINGS

Catherine E. Morrison, Ph.DDirector of Debate

Harrington School of Communication and MediaUniversity of Rhode Island

Draft conference paper submitted for consideration to theSpeech and Debate as Civic Education conference,

Pennsylvania State UniversitySeptember 25, 2014

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Debates are Stories About Things That Change in Time:Civic Engagement with Things

Catherine E. Morrison

Abstract: Rhetorical education in general and debate

education in particular, as civic education, prepares people

to deal with things that change in shared time. In this

paper, I argue that our discussions over civic education

must include the things with which we engage as citizens. I

approach rhetorical theory and debate practice from an

ontological perspective to show that rhetorical modes of

speaking aim to grasp a particular mode of existence for

things: the thing that is shifting in its mode of existence

and becoming otherwise in a shared time and region of

traffic, trade and concern. The rhetorician and debater

both aim in speaking to bring the audience in attendance,

and the changing thing in its open possibilities together to

decide how best grasp the thing as it changes. Following

Bruno Latour, I argue that by attending to the capacities of

things as well as of people, we prepare students for civic

engagements not simply with one another, but with things. A

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civic engagement with things brings things into the great

parliamentary gatherings over matters of concern and grants

them a seat at in parliament alongside speakers and hearers.

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I want to start out with a blanket statement so vague

as to be a truism, but keep with me: I believe the most

pressing problems we face in the 21st century are problems

of things: of extraction, production and consumption, of

finitude and persistence, of value, distribution and need,

of form and matter. Now, to be sure, the most pressing

problems we have faced in any century at all are problems with

things, but we can be more or less aware of that fact at any

given time. It is all too easy to leave the thing out when

we focus on problems. In rhetorical studies, for example, it

is entirely possible to talk about talk without talking

about the things of which we speak. In debate, it is

entirely possible to have a debate about debate rather than

the things to be debated. I argue today that thinking about

argumentation from the perspective of the things we argue about

will help prepare debaters as civic citizens to engage and

deal with these most pressing things.

I use the word “thing” in the broad philosophical sense

—beings both extant and possible. As arts of speaking,

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rhetoric and debate keep the things they are about, their

matters, open.1 We develop ways of dealing with a wide

variety of matters, an ability to see available

possibilities in given cases. While the thing is left open

as a placeholder in theory, in practice rhetoric and debate

address the thing in its concrete, material facticity; what,

here and now, is the case for us who have gathered. In terms

of the relationship between rhetoric and debate, I interpret

rhetoric as an overarching mode of speaking with others

about things that have a corresponding mode of existence. I

interpret debate as a practice of speaking that unfolds in

unique exchanges over rhetorical matters—over things that

have a rhetorical mode of existence, how they are, and how

they could be—toward an ultimate decision between

possibilities. In the following essay, I first discuss the

constitution of things that we speak and debate about. I

1 I draw a distinction between “thing” and “matter.” The thing on

its own—or in itself—is a placeholder. The matter is an involvement with

particular things that have histories, presences and possibilities. At

the risk of over-Heideggerianism: the matter is how the thing matters to

us.

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then argue for approaching rhetoric and debate as vehicles

for civic engagement with things and address the barriers

between ourselves and things. I close with strategies we can

take as teachers of speech and debate to overcome these

barriers and get back to things.

Rhetorical things

I approach the question “what are the things we speak

about?” from two perspectives: as a rhetorical theorist and

as a teacher of debate. As a theorist, I am concerned with

rhetorical ontology: what it means to call a thing

rhetorical and what a rhetorical thing would be. My current

conclusion is that to call a thing rhetorical is to say that

it is capable of becoming otherwise in shared time. The

thing has a capacity to change and it changes for more than

just me. Rhetorical speaking, in other words, corresponds to

a rhetorical mode of existence of the things about which

rhetoric speaks.

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At this point, no one is impressed. Aristotle tells us

that we do not argue about things that cannot be otherwise.2

Lloyd Bitzer tells us that it is situation—temporality in

Heideggerian terms—that determines rhetoricity.3 Barbara

Biesecker investigates the relationship of word and thing

within the rhetorical event.4 I think, however, that

attending to the things-that-can-be-otherwise in the center

2 Aristotle, The Rhetoric and Poetics of Aristotle, trans. W. Rhys Roberts

and Ingraham Bywater. (New York: Random House, 1984), 1.2.12. I contend

that not only is Aristotle’s rhetorical system built around the

particular temporality of rhetorical things, but that the very structure

of the Rhetoric is organized around addressing our aims toward the thing

in Book I, how the thing stands before us in Book II, and how in

speaking we aim to bring our speaking, the thing and the hearer close in

Book III.

3 Lloyd Bitzer, “The Rhetorical Situation,” Philosophy and Rhetoric 1,

no. 1 (1968): 1.

4 Barbara A. Biesecker, “The Prospects of Rhetoric for the Twenty-

First Century: Speculations on Evental Rhetoric Ending with a Note on

Barack Obama and a Benediction by Jacques Lacan,” in Reengaging the

Prospects of Rhetoric: Current Conversations and Contemporary Challenges, ed. Mark J.

Porrovecchio. (New York: Routledge, 2010), 27.

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of these situations and events would be good for rhetorical

theory and good for debate. For rhetorical theory, a focus

on things clarifies to what thing the “of” in rhetorics of

refers by asking how this thing here now has become

rhetorical. For debate, a concern with the thing debated

ensures a continuous tie between the matter as it is present

in the debate and as it is present in the world to us. Even

if debate were merely a simulation of civic engagement, it

nevertheless deals with real things of pressing collective

concern.

Theoretically, I am interested in working out how

rhetoric as a mode of language—a particular way of relating to

things in speaking about them—corresponds to what Bruno

Latour has recently begun calling “modes of existence.” First, I

will lay out Latour’s basic definition of “modes of

existence,” and then briefly show how Latour’s approach

changes the kinds of questions we ask about rhetorical

things, using as an example Lloyd Bitzer’s rhetorical

situation.

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Latour approaches the mode of existence of things from

two basic directions: first, from the ways in which we

concern ourselves with things and second, from the ways in

which things become matters of concern.

When we talk in ordinary language about a group or

individual's ‘mode of existence,’ we are referring

to his morals, his way of being, his ethology and

ecology, his habitat and comforts. In this

inquiry, the term retains all its connotations,

but we give the two component terms "mode" and

"existence" stronger meanings, in order to direct

attention not to groups or individuals but to the

things that humans concern themselves with - and

the questions they ask themselves. Thus, the

concept of a "mode of existence" allows us to give

an answer to the classic "what is?" question

("what is technology, art, economics, etc?") that

is different to the typical essence-based answer.

The answer becomes something like: what are the

beings we are likely to encounter if we ask

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ourselves the question of their existence? What

are their ways of being? What is their ontology?

And, in particular, how does one detect their own

requirements? On the basis of what hesitation,

what category mistake, what crossing? And,

finally, what do they leave in their wake when we

follow their particular trajectory through the

numerous networks ([net]) in which we are able to

detect them?5

When we ask about the mode of existence of the rhetorical

thing, we go beyond essential categories of rhetorical

things to the conditions under which a thing has become or

can become rhetorical. What in it changes and what adheres?

When, where, to whom, and how?

I think that Latour’s questions can add on and augment

our traditional time-centered accounts of rhetoric and

argumentation, so that we can use our current tools to

address not just what we speakers and hearers can do with

5 Bruno Latour, “Modes of Existence,” in An Inquiry into Modes of

Existence, 2013, www.modesofexistence.org.

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things, but also what capacities rhetorical things bring

with them and how they become—and cease being—rhetorical. As

a brief example from a longer work in progress, here are a

few possible paths to the things at the heart of Bitzer’s

rhetorical situation.

The first half of Latour’s definition of modes of

existence, how we concern ourselves with things, accords

closely with Bitzer’s description of the rhetorical

situation. Rhetorical discourse points to human modes of

existence, constructed amidst morals, ways of being,

ethologies and ecologies, habitats and comforts.6 Yet each

component of the rhetorical situation also implies

particular modes of existence of things around which

rhetorical situations gather. An exigence is the

annunciation of a change in the mode of existence of a

thing, in two directions: something embedded in our traffic

and trade has become otherwise, but the thing also calls for

and is capable of change at the hands of those who share its

time and place. The possibilities of change for the thing

6 Bitzer, “The Rhetorical Sitation,” 2

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are augmented by the capacities of its concerned audience.

The time in which the thing changes, its has been, is, and will be,

is a particular type of regional shared time, where the

intensity of attachments of the audience radiate from the

thing outward in distance and concern and some investments

are stronger than others. Because the rhetorical thing’s

mode of existence is marked by change, it is not entirely

separated from its prior and future modes of existence—

though the being of the thing is up in the air, it maintains

a concrete facticity as it changes. To borrow an example

from both Aristotle and Bitzer, a contract, in its legal

mode of existence, resists becoming rhetorical. But not

entirely. It is yet to be determined how much the old legal

mode of existence adheres in this situation. As Aristotle

says, we can argue that contracts made at previous times are

no longer relevant to the thing as it stands here before us

today.7 The legal mode of existence adheres to a greater or

lesser extent in the rhetorical thing.

7 Aristotle, Rhetoric, 1.15.7ff

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Focusing on the rhetorical thing does not mean

rejecting concern with the hearers who stand before the

decision over the thing and the speaker who presents the

thing. Instead, as Latour says, we work by way of addition,

adding in concern with the thing, its ontology and

possibilities, maintaining our initial connotations while

inquiring beyond rhetorical modes of language to rhetorical

modes of existence. It is not that Bitzer lacks a coherent

ontology of the thing at the center of the rhetorical

situation. He certainly has one, but it is implicit in the

situation, arising in the situation itself. We make that

ontology explicit by asking Latour’s second line of

questioning: What is the mode of existence of this thing

around which the situation gathers? What allows the thing to

gather others together into a rhetorical situation? How does

the situation arise from a change in a things mode of

existence? Ultimately, how did this thing become a matter at

the center of a rhetorical situation? What is the matter at

the center of the rhetorical situation that is debate and

what questions do we ask of it?

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Debatable Things

Which brings me to the second way that I came to the

question of the things about which we speak and debate. Who

is more concerned with the thing and its possibilities of

change than the debater? I work with the Rhode Island Urban

Debate League, and have been helping with teacher and coach-

assistant training. I was tasked with breaking the entirety

of policy debate down, without jargon, to a handful of

accessible concepts for both the teachers and their eventual

debaters, who were all entirely new to debate. In about an

hour. Finally, ontology pays off! I would talk about debate

not as a game constituted and defined by endless rules and

technical vocabulary, but as a basic rhetorical enterprise.

We are debating over things that can become otherwise in

shared time.

I told the teachers that debate, in all its forms,

tells stories about things that can change in shared time.

The debate then calls us to choose between accounts of the

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possibilities of change. This is the story Aristotle tells.8

This is the story Douglas Ehninger and Wayne Brockriede

tell.9 And, whether he likes it or not (and he does not like

it at all) this is the story Martin Heidegger tells. How

have things been? What choices are present? Toward what may

these choices lead?

Behind a blizzard of jargon in competitive policy

debate (and, I would contend, in all organized competitive

debate to greater or lesser extents) lies a simple

progression of argument, a story told about a thing that can

change in time and what we must do about it, from past to

8 See note 7

9 In Decision by Debate, Ehninger and Brockriede argue that the goal

for debate education is to improve a debater’s critical decision-making.

This critical decision-making must be capable of adaptation and change

along with the thing over which it decides, and must situate the thing

within a social and ethical context. Thus, critical decision-making

allows us to grasp a thing that is capable of change in shared time, and

to understand the thing as something that matters to others. See Douglas

Ehninger and Wayne Brockriede, Decision By Debate, International Debate

Association Press, 4-5.

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present to future. Affirmative structure tells this story,

disadvantage structures tells this story, even procedural

arguments tell this story—though some to greater effect than

others. What has happened, what happens now, what will

happen? A teacher’s goal is to show students how to tell

these stories, and why each part of an argument matters

narratively to the stories both they and their opponents

tell, in order to make students better speakers and better

thinkers. A judge’s goal is to look at the stories the

debaters have told today about the possibilities open to us,

after the cases have been both made and challenged, and

decide which is the most plausible.

From my perspective as a theorist, behind the jargon,

all debate arguments tell stories because they are all

dealing with things that are rhetorical. The most relevant

and pressing aspect of the thing’s being is the capability

of being, having been, or becoming otherwise in shared time.

Debate arguments are accounts of time, marked and made

present in things that change, wherein we are faced with

choices about things that matter to us. I stress this point

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because I think that in debate, the overlay of competition

and the culture which grows naturally from that competition

can draw us to primarily conceive of the things we debate

about in derivative debate-about-debate ways, for example,

as the objects of particular argumentative techniques. In

these cases the matter for debate is essentially reverse-

engineered from a prior conception of what debate should be.

The things we debate about have gone missing!

Let us return to Bitzer-by-way-of-Latour. Matters of

concern do not magically appear fully formed as a plan,

position or model like Athena emerging from her father’s

forehead. Rhetorical situations do not arise because we need

to debate, they arise and then we need to debate. Matters of

concern have already become a problem, and thus the

iterative story-telling of debate addresses how the matter

has brought us to the exigent moment. The matter is not one

of interior contemplation, but rather has complex

implications for a network of stakeholders with greater or

lesser capacities to address the matter. And the matter in

its possibility must be determined in conjunction with its

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concrete facticity, defining and delimiting its mode of

existence.

Underneath all the formal and technical trappings,

ontologically, judges are deciding which story most closely

accords with how things appear to be. In the moment of

decision toward which the whole debate has aimed, judges

themselves stand at a crossroad. The whole debate has been

made present before them, they stand before a set of

delimited possibilities, and the has-been of the debate and

the will-be are joined in a decision about the matter in the

present moment. As Aristotle closes the Rhetoric: I have spoken,

you have heard, here is what is, now decide.10

The whole experience of time, what Heidegger calls

primary temporal ecstasies, lay before us in our decisions

over things capable of change in shared time. And we must

choose because the thing could be this way or it could be

otherwise. It is for this reason that Heidegger pronounces

the Rhetoric the “the interpretation of concrete being-there, the hermeneutic

10 Ibid, 3.19.6

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of being-there itself”11—the “genuine how” of everydayness and thus

of Dasein as it is initially, generally and for the most

part.12 Properly approached from the perspective of the

things we debate about, the practice of debate is one of

practicing making choices over matters of concern in the

moment toward a purpose or goal. However, improperly

approached, where the matter is derived from and projected

toward the small-bore concerns of competition, the practice

of debate unhinges itself from acting and making and becomes

mere technical exercise, satisfying itself with talk about

talk about things.13

Civic Engagement with the Parliament of Things

11 Martin Heidegger, Basic Concepts of Aristotelian Philosophy, trans.

Robert D. Metcalf and Mark B. Tanzer (Bloomington, IN: Indiana

University press, 2010), 75

12 Ibid, 45

13 Ibid, 146: “Praxis can lose the character of poesis; it does not

also need to have the character of acting. It can take on the character

of the mere treating of something in the sense of debating it. The logos

becomes independent; it itself become praxis.”

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Saying that both rhetoric and debate education can

provide genuine civic engagement with things does not mean

that rhetorical and debate education inherently provide

genuine civic engagement with things. Our gatherings of

speakers, hearers and matters can also serve to distance

ourselves from the things around which we gather. Latour

argues that our tendency to speak of things as matters of

fact, rather than matters of concern, limits our ability to

make collective decisions that grapple and engage with those

things. As a matter of fact, a thing speaks for itself. As a

matter of concern, a thing gathers together those for whom

it matters, to address why and how the thing matters, and

what we are to do together.

In arguing for speech and debate as civic engagement

with things, I am advocating thinking about speaking and

arguing from the perspective of what matters, to whom, why

and how. In “From Realpolitik to Dingpolitik: An Introduction to

Making Things Public,” Latour, following Heidegger, tracks

“the thing” (das Ding) back to the Norse Althing, a gathering

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over disagreement. In this event, we have a parliament

filled with representatives standing in for constituencies,

allying and speaking, establishing networks and exercising

power, falling apart, misunderstanding and failing.

The point of reviving this old etymology is that

we don’t assemble because we agree, look alike,

feel good, are socially compatible or wish to fuse

together but because we are brought by divisive

matters of concern into some neutral, isolated

place in order to come to some provisional

makeshift (dis)agreement. If the Ding designates

both those who assemble because they are concerned

as well as what causes their concerns and

divisions, it should become the center of our

attention: Back to Things! Is this not a more engaging

political slogan?14

14 Bruno Latour, “From Realpolitik to Dingpolitik: or How to Make

Things Public,” in Making Things Public-Atmospheres of Democracy catalogue of the

show at ZKM, ed. Bruno Latour, Peter Weibel (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press,

2005), 13.

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Latour proposes we offer things a seat at the table. We

cannot fully accede to the thing, cannot know it entirely,

but we can dialogue. I think that rhetorical studies offer a

promising site for such a dialogue over the particular kinds

of things that can be otherwise in shared time, and debate

offers a reoccurring assembling of speakers, hearers and

matters. Lining up our mode of speaking with things that

have rhetorical or debatable modes of existence allows us to

work out where the word and thing move closer together and

further apart.

What practices are necessary for us to both do things

and to attend to things, in rhetorical theory and in debate?

To begin, consider a set of metaphors we find Aristotle

using again and again: metaphors of temporal closeness or

proximity and tactility. To gather, of course, is to bring

together. Heidegger makes a short note in Basic Concepts of

Aristotelian Philosophy that is crucial to understanding Book

Three of the Rhetoric in particular, and the aim of the

rhetorical arts in general—that what is here, now is gathered

together in abiding with things.

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There = being-present, being-completed, being-here

in the now, in a presence, in being-present,

being-there-having, abiding with...

Abiding, being-in precisely the there of living. A

stone does not abide, it happens. But an animal:

‘It abides’ in its heart! Θιγειν and αφη:24

primary and primitive being-in. ‘Dwelling’! Ουσια,

‘household’! ‘In’=’abiding with...,’ cf. Grimm!

Primary hermeneutical category not at all spatial

as being contained, contained in...With-which of

abiding! 15

Thigein here is to grasp, a term Aristotle uses to describe

the putting-into-act of noeisis or understanding. Aphe is to

touch or come into contact. For Aristotle, our present is

revealed, sometimes literally and sometimes metaphorically,

in touch. When Aristotle talks about energeia—putting into

act, activity, sometimes taken as broadly real or actual

being—his metaphors again are tactile and proximal. For

Heidegger, this is a thing’s being-at-hand. One grasps,

15 Heidegger, Basic Concepts of Aristotelian Philosophy, 257-8 (bold added).

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catches hold of, touches, things come into contact, living

and moving around us. We render and make real.

Particularly in Book Three of the Rhetoric, which deals

with putting the speech into act, presenting and making

manifest the matter, the language of proximity and tactility

is prominent. The thing with which we are concerned, about which we speak

and debate, is close to home. The claim we make on the thing as it

changes holds for all those concerned. We stay close to the

hearer rather than outrun them or lag behind. The very

structure of the speech should be designed to keep the

hearer with us. We show the matter at hand. We capture the

matter as it is in life, both in how it is becomes in

movement and how we expect it already is. The metaphor lives

before the eyes. The maxim goes along with one’s own

experience. We bring both hearer and matter to a decision,

present and re-present. We grasp, grip, take up and come

close to the mark. We also lose, leave behind, freeze up and

miss the mark. We are grasping at something that is moving

and changing, while bringing others along. In speaking,

then, we are attempting to bring the hearer, speaker and

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matter close to determine what the thing is for us and what

we choose to do about it.

Presumably, then, we engage in debate to teach students

how to assemble and deliberate, so that students learn to

come to grips with the matters that touch their lives. Yet in

speaking, and particularly in debating, our grasp is

questionable and tenuous: first and foremost, the thing is

changing. Secondly, the matter matters for more than

ourselves—the proximal time and region of concern, and the

things within the proximity are shared. Thirdly, the

institutions that house our encounters with things may fail

to produce civic engagement with things and instead

reproduce talk about talk, debate about debate.

Grasps, grips and touches are temporal and temporary.

Things that can change have strange being because their

essential being is as a thing that can be otherwise. It is and

is not at once. For Aristotle, the difference in this sort of

being splits rhetoric from philosophy. Latour’s definition

of modes of existence has no interest in creating a

columbarium of types into which we bury things away forever.

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Instead, in studying modes of existence, he is interested in

when they change and meet and touch and fall apart. As

Bitzer notes, the rhetorical situation begins with rupture.

Seen from the perspective of things, the rupture initiates

in a sudden change of a mode of existence. The thing turns

from existing as backgrounded and taken for granted in our

everyday shared traffic and trade, announces itself in

changing its mode of existence, and asserts itself upon us

who share our time with it. A parliament must come into

session, to reassemble the speaker, hearer and matter in the

face of change and choice. The thing has become rhetorical.

We choose and return to everyday life with the hope that

we’ve come to grips with the matter but without any

assurance. Biesecker describes the power of evental rhetoric

as its explicit recognition that the thing of which we speak

lies yet beyond the word, and that our words always fall

short of the (Lacanian) Real Thing. We instead hope only to

come close in and for the moment.

We are moved to grasp, grip and touch. The ones who do

the grasping have as strange a being as the things they

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grasp: they are, and have been, but could yet be otherwise.

While I have predominantly emphasized the thing, as members

of the parliament, we move back and forth between the thing

and those who would decide. The thing concerns not me but us

—here, Heidegger makes his great mistake in rejecting any

claim on time that is not exclusively Dasein’s own. Without

understanding that we are gathering together speaker and

hearer with the things about which they speak, we wind up

puzzling endlessly about things in themselves and not as

they how they are to us. Because rhetorical studies

addresses the theory and practice of engaging with both the

things that change and those who deal with change, it may be

an important actor in our parliament of things. In our

parliament, the rhetorician acts as go-between, gathering

together our ways of being and concerns with those of the

things also being represented as things change.

In debate, then, we play out of this rupturing,

reassembling and provisional partial choosing between

possibilities again and again. In each repetition, we take

on different matters, raise different assemblies, arrange

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different allies, speak to different audiences and compete

against different opponents. Parliaments, however, can be

better or worse at housing gatherings and getting to the

heart of the matter as it matters to us who have gathered here and now.

They can obscure the things we debate about in favor of

evaluating arguments as mere technical exercise. Parliaments

can be built to house only particular types of assemblies

and arguments, rather than allow the types to arise from the

matter. Surely every form of debate has had its share of

motions, propositions or resolutions ruined when a good

central question was buried under meta-debate concerns—the

strategies allowed, styles afforded, grounds delegated or

lines established. Motions, propositions and resolutions

made in this way do more to concretize the conventions of

that particular parliament than to facilitate civic

engagement with things and how they matter to us. In these

cases, the debates serve the parliament, venerating it as an

institution and responding to each rupture with a ritually

repeated set of conventions. Better that the parliament be

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designed to serve the matters over which we debate—Back to

things!

Debate educators also address the theory and practice

of engaging with things that change and those who deal with

change, within the parameters of debate as an activity.

Earlier, I said that even if we take debate as a simulation

of gathering, we would still be simulating gatherings around

real things of concern. I do not actually think that debates

simulate a gathering of the parliament of things, however. I

think that in debate rounds, the parliament is really called

into session. Even in the windiest debates about debate, the

thing is still present in the parliament. Given the

conditions of our gathering, and the norms and regulations

ruling the gathering, we can create a parliament in which

the things we debate about are present as irrelevant to the

debate at hand. That debate educators might describe the

above as “bad debate” indicates a quiet but constant

insistence that debate matters because the things we debate about

matter to us. As Latour argues, our parliaments can be better

or worse at encouraging civic engagement with things,

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centering proceedings around matters of concern, and thereby

realizing the ideals of an “object-oriented democracy.”

Keeping the Things We Speak About Close

I want to close by fleshing out some causes of distance

between speaking and what we speak about, debating and what

we debate about, and then offer an alternative position that

applies our Bitzer-by-way-of-Latour rhetorical frame to

matters for debate. We want to bring things closer in

speaking with one another about them. The language of

closeness and tactility, sharing a thing together in time

which is not entirely our own, and is just out of our grasp

(and that we grasp toward it!) helps to open up new terrain

for rhetoricians and can give debate educators one general

principle to guide argument practice across formats. For

rhetoricians, it both increases our confidence in our grasp

upon the things about which we speak, and it positions our

practice to serve as one clear site at which the world and

the word come together and fall away. For debate educators,

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it serves as a guiding principle to care about the things

over which we debate and resist practices that distance the

world of debate from the world of things.

I offer a simple principle for debate educators that I

think applies equally to rhetorical theorists. Resist

engaging in practices that create distance between the

debaters and the things being debated. Encourage practices

that draw debaters closer to dealing with what these things

are to us here and now, what possibilities are open in these

things, and how we are to choose. Position these things as

things that are close to ourselves and to other people with

whom we share our time. Address the thing that matters to

us. While the above may seem obvious, there are practices

endemic to competitive debate in all its formats that turn

our attention away from things. Below I list three such

practices: the tyranny of debate concepts over debate

arguments about things, constructing topics that serve the

interests of institutionalized debate but not the matters

being debated, and construing matters for debate as objects

of information.

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Understanding debate concepts as jargon with simple

definitions attached, indifferent but necessary components

of a machine, rather than elements of a story about a thing

that changes, is one way to create distance. Here, the

parliament gathered in debate focuses more on the sacred

rites and rituals of the gathering than what gathers us in

the first place. Think, for example, of the way we talk

about “stock issues” in policy debate. The most painful

theoretical debates address solely the concept itself,

creating a tautological whirlpool of argument: Inherency is

necessary, because inherency is necessary, therefore

inherency is necessary. We are not concerned with inherency

because we are invested in the idea of the prima facia case

as a concept. We are concerned because, in this particular

debate, an affirmative team has not established the

necessity to act on the matter. In other words, the concern

is not with the proper practice of debate in general, but

with a story about change that does not make sense as told

in particular—we are concerned with inherency not for what

it is (a “required stock issue”) but what it does in our

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account of change. If the matter is capable of resolving

itself, additional intercession is nonsensical.

Choosing motions or topics that focus on an abstract,

hypothetical question requiring an explicit suspension of

reality for the purposes of debate rather than those that

focus on what University of Alaska-Anchorage Director of

Debate Steve Johnson calls the issues above the fold16—our

collective and contemporary pressing problems with things—

can be another source of distance. Such suspensions of

reality make the matters with which motions deal into

concerns for fictional people in fictional times and places.

Debates in these instances become idle hypothetical musings

regarded from actual positions of removed comfort. The

motion is so concerned with a matter that does not intersect

16 Llano, Stephen, George, Hannah Herman and Sam Natale, In the Bin

Podcast 3. In the Bin: International Debating Podcast, accessed September

18 2014 http://inthebin.podbean.com/e/steve-johnson-of-the-university-

of-alaska-is-in-the-bin-community-outreach-challenges-facing-wudc-using-

computers-in-prep-time-and-so-much-more-with-the-bin-panel-of-steve-

hannah-george-and-sam/

33

with lives of those gathered that it must build an entire

imaginary world wherein the matter for debate would then be

relevant. Motions, propositions and resolutions should

address matters of present concern to us, where things are

changing and we must choose critically between possibilities

present to the speaker, to the hearer and to the things that

lie at the heart of the matter.

Distance between the things of which we speak and

debate also opens up when the thing debated becomes a mere

matter of information. There is no distance further from

things than that of God’s eye. Heidegger describes the

process of objectifying—coming into an “objective” mode of

existence—in terms of distance. Accounting for being in

time initiates in the most intimate everyday experiences,

with life lived between the rising and setting of the sun.

When time takes up an objective mode of existence, it is

seen as outside of us; objectivity is the product of

externalization. We invent greater systems of reckoning and

technologies of accounting to reveal ever realer, truer time

for all. But time for all is time for no one in particular.

34

If we approach the things we debate about primarily as

objects of knowledge rather than matters of concern binding

us together in shared time, we inevitably distance ourselves

from the kinds of things we debate about. We treat the thing as

something to be known as it is essentially and unchangingly,

accessed in ways that are designed to abstract the thing

away from its context to access a kernel of itself—and thus

away from shared time claimed and accounted for by others.

If we limit our aim in debate as civic education to the

well-informed citizen, we limit the things we debate about

to being merely objects of information—addressed to no one

in particular about nothing in particular for no reason in

particular other than because a debate is taking place. In

debate education, we are teaching students how to deal with

things that change in shared time. Change is present, and

parliament must be assembled in the debate.

To be more concrete, let me bring my observations about

Heidegger, Aristotle, Latour and Bitzer together to address

motion/proposition/resolution-writing from the perspective

of the things we debate about. Motions, propositions and

35

resolutions should go back to things. What is the thing we

should debate about, and why does it matter? How has this

become a matter of concern and what questions are we trying

to ask of it? For whom is this a matter of concern—who deals

with these things as part of everyday life, and how is the

thing open to intercession from these people—and what

relation do they have to the debaters and judge? How is this

matter constrained in its possibility for change by concrete

facticity? The answers to such questions would clarify the

exigence that brings this debate into being, the roles and

perspectives of the debaters and judge who act as an

audience capable of accessing and interceding, and the

extent to which our speaking about things correspond to

those concrete, factical things and their possibilities of

change.

I have only really started to think along these lines,

but my recent foray into competitive British Parliamentary

debate offers an example of what I mean by focusing on the

thing in the context of a matter at hand. My understanding

is that ideally, in defining the parameters of the motion

36

and of the clash, that is to say what the opposing

possibilities before which we stand in choice, debaters must

discover how this matter matters to us17 choosing here and now.

They must grasp the heart of the matter as at once open to

possibility and tied to facticity. Debaters on both sides

are judged, in part, on their ability to set up the

parameters of debate not simply to favor victory for their

team, but to ground the debate in a way that speaks to what

really matters for a public audience concerned with this matter,

and gets close to the things around which we have gathered

in concern so that the debaters and judges gathered together

17 What is meant by “us” here is of course very contentious. The

straightforward answer is us reasonable citizens (something like

Perelman and Olbrecht-Tyteca’s universal audience) but that simple

phrase “us reasonable citizens” hides complex problems and hefty

ideological baggage underneath, particularly in the context of

competitive debating where these “universal” audience members are at the

same time highly particular audiences as well, gathered in particular

formats of competitive debates. I prefer, unsurprisingly, a Bitzerian

perspective. The audience is not simply any reasonable person, but a

reasonable person with a stake in the matter who has some form of agency

in bringing about change. They are the people that the thing matters to.

37

have a good debate. Ideally, then, we are looking for civic

engagement with things, not just in isolation, but in how

things present a choice for us and for those within our

regions of concern.

Ultimately, I think that what I have said today is

perhaps more jargon-filled but no different than what I told

those teachers. We are telling stories about things that are

changing, trying to decide which seems closest to us who

share time and place with one another. And we wish to teach

the ways to grasp at the thing in those moments when more

than one hand is necessary. When we engage in rhetoric and

debate as civic education, we must prepare our students to

assemble a parliament that includes themselves, others, and

the things about which we care.

38

Bibliography

References

Aristotle. The Rhetoric and Poetics of Aristotle. Translated by W. RhysRoberts and Ingraham Bywater. New York: Random House, 1984.

Biesecker, Barbara A. “The Prospects of Rhetoric for the Twenty-First Century: Speculations on Evental Rhetoric Ending with a Note on Barack Obama and a Benediction byJacques Lacan.” In Reengaging the Prospects of Rhetoric: Current Conversations and Contemporary Challenges, 16-36. Edited by Mark J. Porrovecchio. New York: Routledge, 2010.

Bitzer, Lloyd. “The Rhetorical Situation. Philosophy and Rhetoric. 1, no. 1 (1968): 1-14.

Ehninger, Douglas and Wayne Brockriede. Decision by Debate. 1963. Reprint, New York: International Debate EducationAssociation, 2008

Heidegger, Martin. Basic Concepts of Aristotelian Philosophy. Translated by Robert D. Metcalf and Mark B. Tanzer. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2009

Latour, Bruno. An Inquiry into Modes of Existence: An Anthropology of the Moderns. Translated by Catherine D. Porter. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013. http://modesofexistence.org

---. “From Realpolitik to Dingpolitik: or How to Make Things Public.” Making Things Public-Atmospheres of Democracy catalogue of the show at ZKM, 2-32. Edited by Bruno Latour, Peter Weibel. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2005. Web.

Llano, Stephen, George, Hannah Herman and Sam Natale. “September 17th with Steven Johnson,” In the Bin Podcast 3. In the Bin: International Debating Podcast.

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http://inthebin.podbean.com/e/steve-johnson-of-the-university-of-alaska-is-in-the-bin-community-outreach-challenges-facing-wudc-using-computers-in-prep-time-and-so-much-more-with-the-bin-panel-of-steve-hannah-george-and-sam/ Accessed September 18 2014

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