“Agonism is a condition of disagreement and confrontation—a condition of contestation and dissensus. Those who espouse an agonistic approach to democracy encourage contestation and dissensus as fundamental to democracy. In this way, an agonistic democracy is different from more formalized practices of deliberative democracy that privilege consensus and rationality.”

“The ongoing disagreement and confrontation are not detrimental to the endeavor of democracy but are productive of the democratic condition. Through contentious affect and expression, democracy is instantiated and expressed. From an agonistic perspective, democracy is a situation in which the facts, beliefs, and practices of a society are forever examined and challenged. For democracy to flourish, spaces of confrontation must exist, and contestation must occur.”

DiSalvo, C. (2015). Adversarial Design. The MIT Press.


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Tags:
Adversarial Design, Agonism, Democracy, Political Design, Education, Neoliberalism,  Homo Economicus, Global North/Global South, Power, Modernism, Ontology, Coloniality/Decoloniality, Techno-Positivist, Publics/Counterpublics

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