Definition of "agon"

It was not ecological pressure or shortages of protein, as anthropologist Marvin Harris has claimed; institutionalized violence, as opposed to the stylized agons of hunters over grievances, was the shadow side of the Neolithic Revolution.

1981, William Irwin Thompson, The Time Falling Bodies Take to Light: Mythology, Sexuality and the Origins of Culture, London: Rider/Hutchinson & Co., page 134

The other ethical system is that of agon. Agon is a battlefield. We enter agon not to exchange, but to fight. We dream of winning but are also prepared to lose – including to lose ourselves, even in the literal sense of dying for a great cause.

2023 October 17, Volodymyr Yermolenko, “Europe seeks peace, not war. But will it be ready if war comes to Europe?”, in The Guardian‎

Freud's originality stemmed from his aggression and ambition in his agon with biology.

1986 March 23, Harold Bloom, “Freud, the Greatest Modern Writer”, in New York Times‎

The point, though, is that to fully and uncritically surrender to such agon against individuals is to invite one's own ethical degeneration; […]

2022, China Miéville, chapter 6, in A Spectre, Haunting: On the Communist Manifesto