Agonism - Agonism and Other Traditions in Political Thought

Agonism and Other Traditions in Political Thought

Agonists are skeptical about the capacity of politics to eliminate, overcome, or circumvent deep divisions within our society—of class, culture, gender, ideology, etc. As such, they find liberalism, communitarianism, and multiculturalism wanting. These theories — which have been the backbone of political theory for the past thirty years — are in essence optimistic about the possibility of finding a harmonious and peaceful pattern of political and social cooperation. Agonists, then, both claim that this optimism is unjustified and, hence, re-orient political theory to another question: How should we deal with irreducible difference? In the view of agonists, proponents of the aforementioned traditions, in keeping their eyes fixed on forms of utopian cooperation, have failed to respond usefully to the messiness of contemporary political practice.

Agonism is also opposed to an important strand in the Marxist conception of politics known as "materialism". Marx would have agreed with the agonists that society had always been full of conflict, when he wrote: "The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles". He also thought that the causes of conflict were inescapable features of present—i.e. capitalist—society. But, in his view, history would develop in such a way as to eventually destroy capitalism, and replace it with a harmonious society — which was his conception of communism. Especially during the 1960s and 1970s, many people, academics included, subscribed to a roughly Marxist analysis. Since then, many of those people have come to the view that the "materialist conception of history" does not give sufficient reason for hope about a harmonious society to come. Chantal Mouffe and Ernesto Laclau are amongst those who have come to agonism from a background in Marxism and the social movements of the middle part of the last century.

Thus, agonism can be seen as a response to the perceived failures of strands of idealism and materialism to accord with reality, and to provide useful responses to contemporary problems. It can also, in some sense, be seen as a development of theories that emphasised, even celebrated conflict, in a potentially less sensitive and responsible manner than agonism. For examples, see Carl Schmitt's essay The Concept of the Political and certain readings of the work of Friedrich Nietzsche. In any case, it is clear that any conception of the political that involves a celebration of conflict may entail an endorsement of the domination of some portion of society over others. Agonism, in opposition to any such trend, is avowedly pluralist in its political outlook. It sees political tensions as having an essential place in society, but believes that they should be approached discursively, not in an attempt to eliminate "the other".