Law debates are activities that give a glimpse of the quality of education of a law school. As highly-publicized contests, they show to the general public what law schools teach. A law debate team represents the school and in law debates, just like all debates, have two possible outcomes for the debate team which is to win or lose. Lyotard once talked about the language games. He said that those who dominate the discourse, dominate the society. Law debates are discourses and the number of wins determine the power which can be used to gain advantage against the other. Now, since law debate teams represent the law school in general and its students in particular, whenever they increase the number of wins over loses, they also increase the power of the students they represent in the outside world that will give them an edge. For instance, Ateneo law debate team have the most number of wins over loses, most likely, the public would have the stereotype of Ateneo law students to be better than anyone else and will most likely hire Ateneo law school graduates since law debates created a hyper-reality, a myth that they are better than others because of the highly publicized debates. Sadly, if the real world is based on power, domination and control where competition is the norm, it is the best performers who acquire more power and the rest only acquire the left-overs. UST law debate lost in the elimination round against Ateneo. Last year, it was La Salle. We often lose in the language games, thus those who control the discourse were given control over the minds of the populace and it is not us. We, as far as I am concerned, were in the sidelines while Ateneo and La Salle law schools roll over us like Panzer tanks rolling towards Paris during the second world war. In this society, power has become a necessity and since the media articulates power, highly publicized debates often become like arenas where competitors do not just compete for the medal but also for the universal aspiration of domination and control. So our inability to break in the elimination round so to speak, meant that we dont have edge in the outside world. Even if assuming but not conceding, we graduate law school and pass bar exams, finding employment would still be like finding needle in a haystack given the neo-liberal direction of the world market. That is why, what is needed now is for UST law debaters to create a hyper-reality, a legend that all of us were as competent as Ateneo and La Salle to the general public. PS. If you hink of me as a nutjob and a bastard for saying this, it is your right to do so. FrancoisFoucaltLyotard 8/15/2014 23:32:29
Posted on: Fri, 15 Aug 2014 22:37:26 +0000
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