Central to pluralist engagement is the attitude that conXict across diVer-
ence is to be welcomed, and certainly not avoided. The key claim of those
supporting agonistic encounters is that moral conXict and engagement across
diVerences is a valuable and indispensable part of social and political life.
Such conXict is good for the body politic, and both groups and individuals
within it. Honig ( 1993 ) points out that too much political theory has
been about avoiding conXict and eliminating dissonance, resistance, strug-
gle—the displacement of politics. While she looks to Nietzsche and Arendt as
examples of those who do not displace rivalrous encounters, both Wrst
generation and more recent pluralist theorists embrace such agonistic
engagement.
James embraced the need to see alternatives and imagine other states of
mind ( 1978 , 4 ). Follett called for an inclusive, integrative resolution
of diVerences, brought about ‘‘by the reciprocal adaptings of the reactions
of individuals, and this reciprocal adapting is based on both agreement and
diVerence’’ ( 1918 , 35 ). She was concerned that addressing conXict not lead to
the dismissal of diversity. ‘‘What people often mean by getting rid of conXict
is getting rid of diversity, and it is of the utmost importance that these should
not be considered the same’’ (Follett 1924 , 300 ). Key to both James and Follett
was a process open to diVerence and yet focused on making connections
across that diVerence.
A number of contemporary pluralist theorists pick up on this process, and
the need for an ethic of agonistic respect across diVerence. For Tully, inter-
cultural dialog is the central task of pluralist politics, and in order for
negotiation to occur across diVerence, an ethic of mutual respect and recog-
nition will ‘‘enhance a critical attitude to one’s own culture and a tolerant and
critical attitude towards others’’ (Tully 1995 , 207 ). Taylor ( 1995 , 34 ) notes that
identity is never worked out in isolation; ‘‘but that I negotiate it through
dialogue, partly overt, partly internal, with others.... My own identity
crucially depends on my dialogical relations with others.’’ Connolly, however,
is the key theorist who espouses such an ethos within a critical pluralist
frame. The response to a pluralizing society that is continually and agonis-
tically overlapping, interacting, and negotiating needs to be an ethos of what
Connolly calls critical responsiveness, the ‘‘indispensable lubricant of political
pluralization’’ ( 1995 , xvi). Such an ‘‘ethical connection.. .Xowing across
fugitive experiences ofintrasubjective andintersubjectivediVerence opens
up relational possibilities of agonistic respect, studied indiVerence,
critical responsiveness, and selective collaboration between interdependent,
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