Toward a queering of debate

Abstract

I investigate what it might mean to queer debate. I begin by isolating an impasse: queer, which is radically open, seems to be in conflict with debate, which is radically constrained. Rather than attempt to redefine either queer or debate, I approach the aforementioned question by reading it as aporia, or generative roadblock, and forward together the conflicting interpretations of queer and debate. That is, instead of trying to resolve the tension between queer and debate, I revel in the messy irresolvability of putting those two terms together. From this position, I suggest that a queer model of debate is one which is unconcerned with broad, abstract models of debate but instead embraces the contingency and contextuality of each particular debate as a starting point for a distinct educational model of this activity. My hope, then, is that debate coaches and scholars may continue pushing the boundaries of what debate may do without stepping away from its particularities and nuances.

Keywords:

• Debate
• queer
• models
• debates about debate

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Drs. Jyleesa Hampton, Nathan Rothenbaum, and Ben Voth as well as each of the anonymous reviewers for taking the time to thoroughly and critically engage the essay. The author would also like to thank Drs. Cecilia Cerja, Taylor Johnson, Mikaela Malsin, and Becca Steiner, whose feedback throughout the writing process made this project possible.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Similar academic takes on queer are expressed by scholars such as Butler (1993, 226), who suggests that queer “derives its force precisely through the repeated invocation by which it has become linked to accusation, pathologization, [and] insult.”

2 Queer, of course, is very indebted to, and certainly connected with, other academic fields of study such as LGBT identity politics, feminism, fields investigating race and racism, and the intersections of these fields of study. My point here is that the reason queer is not a mere synonym for these other fields is its radical openness (Butler 1990; Cathy Cohen 1997; Sedgwick 1990; Slagle 1995; West 2018).