Week 3 Debate 1 Adjuticator's Report

A debate ultimately comes down to who is more convincing. However, when attempting to convince an informed audience to believe one side of a deeply theoretical topic, this task becomes that much more difficult - Both teams will be working against the leanings of the theorists and the subjectivity the audience has already developed.

As a result, adjudication had to be based on what they brought to the debate, and who developed and supported their chosen case line the best. Knowing some of what the teams had prepared had placed us in a unique position, but what Rachel and I decided was to use the theoretical framework as background, and award the debate based on who better engaged with it.

What the two teams actually presented was one case founded very strongly in Auslander’s material pitted against a case that attempted to build an argument around the theory underpinning it.

The Affirmative case was based around the codependency that now exists between the live and the mediatized. While all team members spoke very well and presented their material, what their case lacked was a central stated thesis, which impeded their ability to argue their side of the topic.

On the other hand, the Negative’s stated case line was that by examining what was lost in the cultural space in live/mediatized performance, we could find the inherent opposition. What I felt gave the Negative added weight was the fact that this was a line of reasoning overtly shared by all three Negative speakers and by introducing their own burden of proof, they could present a conclusive case.

Because refutation was lacking on both sides, the largest point of contention between the two teams, and the issue that proved most relevant in our deliberation, was whether or not extending the live with the mediated showed an inherent opposition between the two.

In order to resolve this, we worked from the accepted definition posed by the first Affirmative speaker, Auslander’s notion that the opposition, if inherent, will be found on the level of “cultural economy”.

While the argument seems to support the Affirmative case, the Negative typified this extension as a shift in the balance of power in the sensory expectations of an audience. Therefore, a mediatized extension competes with the preconceived notions of the live, and an opposition must exist.

This served to both fulfill the Negative’s burden of proof and work against the Affirmative’s codependency standpoint.

It is a shame that both teams missed a few opportunities, both on the Affirmative’s part, where they could have explored a wider range of examples of codependency and a more explicit core argument, and the Negative, who would have been much stronger with more succinct closing statements across the board and a more directed attack on the Affirmative’s case.

Again though, both teams should be commended for their engagement with the material, and a very well fought debate.