Beyond the realm of the political, agonistic frameworks have similarly been utilized in broader cultural critiques of hegemony and domination, as well as in literary and science fiction.
"[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.
[6] Theorists of agonistic pluralism, including post-modernist thinkers Chantal Mouffe, Ernesto Laclau, and William E. Connolly, reject the Habermasian notion of a rational universal consensus that can be reached through deliberation alone.
[12] It is argued that Habermasian models of deliberative democracy are ill-equipped for pluralist societies, since they simply purport new paradigms of liberal democratic theory, which rely on the same rationalistic, universalistic, and individualistic theoretical frameworks.
[13][14] Many of these agonistic thinkers point to the ideological entrenchment of global neoliberalism as evidence of how presumed consensus can reinforce hegemony and preclude opposition.
Thus, for agonistic pluralists, if reason alone cannot yield a legitimate uniform consensus, and power imbalances can never truly be removed from the public sphere, then one must accept the inevitability of conflict in the political realm.
[17] Others build on this criticism, arguing that agonists' focus on passions, power, and the limits of reason ultimately reduces the persuasive capacity of their political and social theories, which remain largely reliant on the process of rationalization.
For instance, a successful agonistic pluralism requires that all parties share commitments to democratic ideals such as "equality" and "liberty," although the contents of these normative conceptions can vary greatly across groups.
[12] Yet, it is argued by critics of agonistic pluralism that, on the one hand, if parties share the same ethico-political principles, then a consensus need not be prohibited through ineradicable conflict.
It is argued that deliberation is constitutive of conflict, insofar as antagonism requires a certain degree of understanding of the "other" and an ability to use shared speech acts to explain points of divergence with opposing parties; this becomes difficult to do under an agonistic framework.
"[21] 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.
"[24] 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 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.
"[20] 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.