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." The critical conception of agonism developed by Colaguori and Adorno 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 by writing, "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. See also Moral relativism Pluralism Radical democracy References Political theories Conflict (process) Pluralism (philosophy)