Talk:Agonism

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This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 31 January 2021 and 6 May 2021. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Ajsorota. Peer reviewers: Michael.gary16, Gostislav.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 13:38, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

Agonistic Pluralism

The description of agonistic pluralism, as it currently stands, is framed in such a way that it conflates agonistic pluralism with the tradition of agonism more broadly. It is important to establish these as two separate entities. Agonism, broadly constructed, holds a certain inevitability of conflict in the political. Agonistic pluralism, on the other hand, describes a distinct conception of democracy that is posited by agonists. In this sense, it is a particular extension of the agonistic structure. I will add a narrower section on agonistic pluralism. Ajsorota (talk) 17:45, 6 March 2021 (UTC)

OR

Wikipedia is an encyclopedia. That means it is a tertiary source. That means articles should be based on existing secondary sources. This article primarily cites primary sources. That makes it a secondary source, which is to say original research. This article must either cite a substantial secondary literature on 'agonism' or go hence. mgekelly 23:32, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

Here's some secondary sources. While this article may need revamping to be more wiki-like, the theory itself isn't original research. Sorry, I don't have time to fix it myself- I was just checking out this page because agonism was mentioned in school today.

Agonism in divided societiesIn Search of the talkative public] Agonism and pluralism--PaeneJoscose

The article already does use secondary sources, as well as primary ones. And even if it was enitrely secondary, that wouldn't make it original research. If you want to add material from those three sources, go for it, I've no doubt it'll usefully supplement the article - but there's no need to not reference primary material alongside them. For example, all articles related to the Marxist tradition on Wikipedia cite Marx and Engels. Of course they do, and no one is suggesting that they 'go hence'! In my view, 'original research' consists in creating one's own primary source - e.g. a personal account of a news event, direct onto wikipedia - or an original or obscure account/interpretation of primary/secondary sources. And I think you'd have to be clear what bit you thought was orignal or obscure. Breadandroses 08:53, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

Though I have begun to familiarize myself with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines in preparation for editing, there is a lot to know and people don't seem to have consensus on some of the guidelines. My own personal standards for original research, from academia, are close to yours- an original text or a unique synthesis/interpretation of an existing work, i.e, a book report is not orginal research, despite having primary material as its source. But the WP:NOR policy seemed to imply that there needed to be secondary sources backing up the primary source. Since I'm not familar with exactly how Wikipedia decides to delete articles (it seems a little arbitrary at times) I wanted to add some secondary sources, since it seems like sometimes people nominate things for deletion because it isn't an important topic to them, and I thought this article was useful.PaeneJoscose 12:17, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

Cheers for the reply PaeneJoscose. Do you think the best thing, then, might be for you to add more material from secondary sources, such as those you listed? (I'm afraid I don't have alot of wiki-time right now...) Breadandroses 15:23, 6 March 2007 (UTC) EDIT: Just saw that you said you don't have alot of time either in your first post... oh well, perhaps someone else will take it on. ;)

Nazism

I'm not sure why the comment connecting Schmitt and Nietzsche to Nazism is relevant to this article, so I'm deleting it. I don't contest Schmitt's connection to the Nazis, it's just I'm not sure why that's something that needs to be mentioned in this article. It's something that is and should be dealt with in the Carl Schmitt article. Jordansc 16:12, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

Oops, I didn't read past that line about the Nazis. The next few sentences explain why this is relevant, but they're also POV. So, rather than be bold and hack it all out, I think it should be discussed. Jordansc 16:14, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

I think that the claim that Nietzsche "essentially involved a celebration of the domination of some portion of society over others" is constestable. I'm not familiar with Schmitt's writings, so I can't comment on him.

Perhaps phrasing those lines as something like "Agonists have engaged with the work of Schmitt and Nietzsche, drawing from Nietzsche's theory of (insert concept agonists refer to here). In contrast to Schmitt's concept of (...), which celebrated conflict and the elimination of the 'other', Agonists believe that while political tensions have an essential place in society, those tensions can be addressed discursively in a pluralist society..." I think when concepts are reified they can sound more POV. Jordansc, does that address your POV concerns? Could you clarify? BreadandRoses, your thoughts? PaeneJoscose 11:51, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

I agree with the questionable nature of the comments on Nietzsche. Although some have read Nietzsche as an endorsement of Master morality, I believe there are just as many works citing him as an agonist of sorts. 128.239.195.11 (talk) 01:11, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

Tautology?

It seems this sentence is tautological: "It (meaning agonism??) can also, in some sense, be seen as a development of theories which emphasised, even celebrated conflict, in a potentially less sensitive and responsible manner than agonism." In any event, the sentence is unclear.

Yergnaws (talk) 05:47, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

Critics of Agonistic Pluralism

There does need to be a brief description of critics of this school of political thought, surely. Are there any from the Habermasian or Foucauldian schools of social and political theory who have criticised this model of political practice? Otherwise, this entry seems to uncritically assess this particular POV without offering critiques of its position. Calibanu (talk) 23:16, 4 December 2009 (UTC)User Calibanu - I think that maybe the order of this is wrong, as Mouffe's theory of agonistic democracy is in many senses a critique of Habermas's rational deliberative democracy - so to put that in turn as a critique of this is getting things up.Iamsorandom (talk) 23:28, 15 December 2013 (UTC)

It seems pretty odd for so much of the currrent critic section to be about the Foucauldian critique, when theres such a strong strand of support within his work. On the other hand, the deliberative democrats are only briefly mentioned, despite the Habermasian critique being far more extensive. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.12.24.244 (talk) 22:27, 20 December 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I agree this is funny. also, it reads:

"Governmentality requires civil society to operate effectively, although Foucault and allied theorists do not regard civil society as an avenue of liberty against statist intrusion, but as a partial creation of particular forms of governmentality. However, governmentality should not be identified solely with the state, judicial, or formal representative democratic institutions. It may include such discourses as visible traces but does not restrict itself solely to them and may include the work of civil servants, administrative professionals, political theorists, economists, religious or nontheist ethical theorists, and others who seek to create new political subjects.[7]"

I'm not a huge expert on Foucault, but this misrepresents what governmentality is about: governmentality is about decentring government, arguing that the techniques fo control (discipline, surveillance) have propogated throughout society and are used by a variety of institutions (schools, factories, corporations) to manage people. It's not meant to be about the government. This makes it confusing Iamsorandom (talk) 23:28, 15 December 2013 (UTC)

One thing is very weird in this article: To have so much space for an author, "Colaguori", who (if the wikipedia version of his discourse is accurate) is confusing agonism and competition, is very questionable... 82.82.39.141 (talk) 19:22, 27 October 2014 (UTC)

William E. Connolly

William E. Connolly#Agonistic democracy:
Connolly is one of the founders of this subfield 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...

Could somebody integrate him into the discourse?--DadaNeem (talk) 20:25, 27 July 2014 (UTC)

Basic details needed

This article doesn't describe much of anything about what this political theory actually proposes. -- Beland (talk) 00:02, 22 May 2016 (UTC)

Dialectical Materialism

In section "Agonism and other traditions in political thought", the first sentence reads,

'Agonism is opposed to a strand in the Marxist conception of politics known as "materialism".'

The word "materialism" is linked to the article "Materialism". There is another article called "Dialectical materialism", which seems a better target for the link in this context. If other editors with more subject knowledge agree, the perhaps the word "materialism" ought also to be substituted with "Dialectical materialism".Hedles (talk) 16:30, 6 May 2019 (UTC)

Suggested retitle - "Agonism (political philosophy)"

I am proposing a review of naming of articles with the keywords "agonism" and "agonist" in order to improve accessibility via the disambiguation page and, therefore, general searches on these two words as well as more immediate subject area identification from some of the articles' names themselves.

I propose that this article be renamed, "Agonism (political philosophy)" or "Agonism (philosophy)" or, possibly, "Agonism (politics)".

Please see my section in Talk:Agonist (disambiguation) 'Add link to article "Physiological agonism and antagonism" and review Agonism/Agonist article naming'.

Assuming there are no contrary opinions or improved suggestions within a couple of weeks, I'll go ahead and make these proposed changes.Hedles (talk) 00:41, 7 May 2019 (UTC)