Hegemony
In the 19th century, hegemony came to denote the "Social or cultural predominance or ascendancy; predominance by one group within a society or milieu". Later, it could be used to mean "a group or regime which exerts undue influence within a society". Also, it could be used for the geopolitical and the cultural predominance of one country over others, from which was derived "hegemonism", as in the idea that the Great Powers meant to establish European hegemony over Asia and Africa.
Agonism
For Adorno, agonism is also about the "theodicy of conflict" where opponents "want to annihilate one another... to enter the agon, each the mortal enemy of each" (Minima Moralia). Adorno also sees agonism as the underlying principle in Hegel's dialectic of history where "dialectics (growth through conflict) is the ontology of the wrong state of things. The right state of things would be free of it: neither a system nor a contradiction" (Negative Dialectics). Colaguori reconstructs the concept of the agon to invoke this critical, destructive aspect as a way of extending Adorno's critique of modern domination and identify how the normalization and naturalization of conflict is used 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" (C. W. Mills).