Agonism

Agonism (from Greek ἀγών agon, "struggle") is a political theory that emphasizes the potentially positive aspects of certain (but not all) forms of political conflict. It accepts a permanent place for such conflict, but seeks to show how people might accept and channel this positively. For this reason, agonists are especially concerned with debates about democracy. The tradition is also referred to as agonistic pluralism.

For other uses, see Agonism (disambiguation).

Theory of agonism

There are three elements shared by most theorists of agonism: constitutive pluralism; a tragic view of the world, as well as belief in the value of conflict.[1] Constitutive pluralism holds that there is no universal measure of adjudicating between conflicting political values.[2] For example, Chantal Mouffe argues, following Carl Schmitt, that politics is built on the distinction of 'us' and 'them'.[3] Based on this, agonists also believe in "a tragic notion of the world without hope of final redemption from suffering and strife", which cannot find a lasting political solution for all conflicts.[4] Instead, agonists see conflict as a political good.[5] For example, Mouffe argues that "In a democratic polity, conflicts and confrontations, far from being a sign of imperfection, indicate that democracy is alive and inhabited by pluralism”.[6]

Agonism is not simply the undifferentiated celebration of antagonism:

Agonism implies a deep respect and concern for the other; indeed, the Greek agon refers most directly to an athletic contest oriented not merely toward victory or defeat, but emphasizing the importance of the struggle itself—a struggle that cannot exist without the opponent. Victory through forfeit or default, or over an unworthy opponent, comes up short compared to a defeat at the hands of a worthy opponent—a defeat that still brings honor. An agonistic discourse will therefore be one marked not merely by conflict but just as importantly, by mutual admiration...

— Political theorist Samuel A. Chambers[7]

Bonnie Honig, an advocate of agonism, writes: "to affirm the perpetuity of the contest is not to celebrate a world without points of stabilisation; it is to affirm the reality of perpetual contest, even within an ordered setting, and to identify the affirmative dimension of contestation".[8][9] In her book Political Theory and the Displacement of Politics, she develops this notion through critiques of consensual conceptions of democracy. Arguing that every political settlement engenders remainders to which it cannot fully do justice, she draws on Nietzsche and Arendt, among others, to bring out the emancipatory potential of political contestation and of the disruption of settled practices. Recognizing, on the other hand, that politics involves the imposition of order and stability, she argues that politics can neither be reduced to consensus, nor to pure contestation, but that these are both essential aspects of politics.

William E. Connolly is one of the founders of this school of thought in political theory. He promotes the possibility of an "agonistic democracy", where he finds positive ways to engage certain aspects of political conflict. Connolly proposes a positive ethos of engagement, which could be used to debate political differences. Agonism is based on contestation, but in a political space where the discourse is one of respect, rather than violence. Unlike toleration, agonistic respect actively engages adversaries in political contests over meaning and power. Unlike antagonism, it shows respect by admitting the ultimate contestability of even one’s own deepest held commitments. Agonism does not name a model of democracy; it is a practice of democratic engagement that destabilizes appeals to authoritative identities and fixed universal principles. Connolly's critical challenges to John Rawls's theory of justice and Jürgen Habermas's theory on deliberative democracy have spawned a host of new literature in this area. His work Identity\Difference (1991)[10] contains an exhaustive look at positive possibilities via democratic contestation.

Critical conceptions

The work of Theodor Adorno and Michel Foucault have also invoked conceptions of agonism and the agon in a more critical sense beyond that of political counter-hegemony. Although this usage of Agonism has been largely ignored it has been explored at some length by Claudio Colaguori in Agon Culture: Competition, Conflict and the Problem of Domination. For Colaguori, "the agon is literally the arena of competition, the scene of contest, and the locus of adversarial conflict. The philosophy of agonism affirms the idea that transcendence, truth, and growth are generated from the outcome of the contest...the concept of agonism is often understood in an affirmative sense as the generative principle of economy, society and even natural ecology and personal growth... The ambivalent character of agonism is that it is often seen as a mode of transcendence, while its instrumental relation to the mode of destruction is rarely acknowledged".[11] Agonism forms part of the instituted social order where society "produces and reproduces itself precisely from the interconnection of the antagonistic interests of its members" (Adorno, 1974).[12]

For Adorno, agonism is also about the "theodicy of conflict" where opponents "want to annihilate one another... to enter the agon, each the mortal enemy of each" (Minima Moralia). Adorno also sees agonism as the underlying principle in Hegel's dialectic of history where "dialectics (growth through conflict) is the ontology of the wrong state of things. The right state of things would be free of it: neither a system nor a contradiction" (Negative Dialectics). Colaguori reconstructs the concept of the agon to invoke this critical, destructive aspect as a way of extending Adorno's critique of modern domination and identify how the normalization and naturalization of conflict is used as an ideology to justify various forms of domination and subjugation. The agonistic ideology that has been appropriated by popular culture for example makes use of agonistic themes to celebrate competition as the wellspring of life in such a way as to normalize "a military definition of reality" (C. W. Mills).

The critical conception of agonism developed by Adorno and Foucault emphasizes how aspects of competition can be utilized to reinforce the project of domination that is evident in the geopolitics of modernity. Colaguori suggests that a critical conception of agonism can be applied to the study of "numerous forms of social conflict in gender, class and race relations where the competitive mode of interaction prevails in the formation of social hierarchies based on competition as a form of exclusion". Colaguori further states that, "after 100 years of technological progress, human societies are trapped in a perpetual dynamic of conflict and crisis, with modernization at a standstill. While this dialectic of development and destruction has been analysed from political and economic perspectives, Agon Culture offers an analysis of the human condition through an examination of the way in which the cultural ideology of competition operates as a mode of rationality that underpins the order of domination."

Agonism in fiction

The science fiction novel Lady of Mazes by Karl Schroeder depicts a post-human future where "agonistics" is the ruling principle of the solar system. The story explains agonistics as "You can compete, and you can win, but you can never win once-and-for-all". A character gives two examples of agonism: a presidency with term limits, and laws aimed at preventing corporate monopolies.[13]

See also

References
  1. Wenman, Mark (2013). Agonistic Democracy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 28. doi:10.1017/cbo9780511777158. ISBN 978-0-511-77715-8.
  2. Wenman, Mark (2013). Agonistic Democracy: Constituent Power in the Era of Globalisation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 30. doi:10.1017/cbo9780511777158. ISBN 978-1-107-00372-9.
  3. Mouffe, Chantal (2005). On the Political. Routledge. p. 15. ISBN 978-0-415-30521-1.
  4. Wenman, Mark (2013). Agonistic Democracy: Constituent Power in the Era of Globalisation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 33. doi:10.1017/cbo9780511777158. ISBN 978-1-107-00372-9.
  5. Wenman, Mark (2013). Agonistic Democracy: Constituent Power in the Era of Globalisation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 45. doi:10.1017/cbo9780511777158. ISBN 978-1-107-00372-9.
  6. Mouffe, Chantal (2000). Deliberative Democracy Or Agonistic Pluralism. Institut für Höhere Studien. p. 34.
  9. Political Theory and the Displacement of Politics, p. 15
  10. Identity/Difference.
  11. "C Colaguori" Agon Culture: Competition, Conflict and the Problem of Domination. de Sitter Publications, Whitby, Ontario, ISBN 978-1-897160-63-3
  12. Theodor Adorno, 1974, "Minima Moralia". London: Verso Editions
  13. Karl Schroeder Lady of Mazes, Tor, ISBN 0-7653-1219-0
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