The Politics and Aesthetics of Entrepreneurship: A Fourth Movements in Entrepreneurship Book

Citation

Hartley, D. (2010), "The Politics and Aesthetics of Entrepreneurship: A Fourth Movements in Entrepreneurship Book", International Journal of Entrepreneurial Behavior & Research, Vol. 16 No. 3, pp. 260-263. https://doi.org/10.1108/13552551011042825

To conclude their “Movements in Entrepreneurship” series, Daniel Hjorth and Chris Steyaert have performed an entrepreneurial event in their book, The Politics and Aesthetics of Entrepreneurship. Critically evaluating the historical strategies and discursive boundaries of the subject to distinguish the aesthetics, politics and, by way of this, ethics of entrepreneurship studies, Hjorth and Steyaert imagine, and hope for, a life‐affirming entrepreneurship studies that is able to accommodate aesthetic forms that have been historically marginalised. In doing so, the book retreats from an entrepreneurship discourse predisposed to define what is visible, beautiful, right and true in an isolated and observed entity. It then presents novel forms on the subject, produced and performed in accordance with different contexts of time, place and person and illuminates the interrelation of history, timing and place in entrepreneurship processes and policy making generally. This all comes into being through an ontology of becoming and a new language that is able to engage with a subject undergoing constant change. By hoping to make space in entrepreneurship studies for researchers, theorists and entrepreneurs who are missing or marginalised, the editors frame the book as an exercise in Gilles Deleuze's notion of “fabulation”. It is a disruption in entrepreneurship studies – a political and tactical act that establishes a front and that, fittingly, has the creative destruction of “fire” as its icon. Drawing on Michel de Certeau to frame the book, Gilles Deleuze, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Michel Foucault to illuminate the subject's processual nature, and Friedrich Von Hayek, Frederick Taylor and Joseph Schumpeter more generally, the writing comes into being through 4 sections, with 3 chapters in each. These take us from “Entrepreneurial Policies”, to “Entrepreneurial Places”, to “Entrepreneurial Identities” to evaluate the historical and present form of entrepreneurship studies. The final section focuses upon “Entrepreneurial Images” and finishes with an “extroduction” in which the editors imagine life‐affirming entrepreneurship studies and lines of flight for entrepreneurial research.

In section one, “Entrepreneurial Policies”, the historically formed political scene for entrepreneurship studies is set and readied for transformation as the book progresses. Following Christian Maravelias, it seems enterprise discourse has been colonized by Von‐Hayek‐style Neo‐liberalism and Taylorist managerialism. Combined with post‐bureaucratic changes in the organization of work, this historical process may have altered our experience of freedom and warrants that we recognise “opportunism” and “potential” as more apt definitions of contemporary experience. Both regulating and empowering, such changes might cajole individuals to satisfy the managerial desire for flexible and efficient workers, indicating that enterprise discourse might currently resemble Michel de Certeau's (1984) “Strategies” that affirm “places of power” and dominate individuals' daily life. Chapter 3 by Caroline Wigren and Leif Melin then shifts the theme of “top‐down” management to characterise the role of government. Their devaluing of Taylor's managerial science suggests issues of history, time and place are often ignored by policy makers and claim this was exemplified by Sweden's VINNOVA National Innovation Systems plan. It appears a more tactical approach that repositions history and place at the centre of good policy making could empower historically‐formed and place‐oriented entrepreneurial passion. Then inverting the strategies of entrepreneurship studies, chapter 4 sees Lauretta Conklin‐Frederking plot the entrepreneurial role of a governmental agency, the US National Endowment for the Arts. First, exploiting uncertainty and generating opportunities, the NEA became depoliticized. Later, acting as a device of political cleavage and operating strategically, a traditional, politicized, managerial or venture capitalist role is more applicable. It seems, then, that, entrepreneurial acts are not restricted to those traditionally deemed “entrepreneurs”. Moreover, it appears functionalist and materialist managerial discourse has obscured entrepreneurial acts and restricted our understanding of who are potential entrepreneurs.

Section two, “Entrepreneurial Places”, highlights places potentially marginalised by enterprise discourse and expands and politicizes the spatial nature of the entrepreneurial event. Chapter 5, by Pierre Guillet de Monthoux, focuses upon conceptual artists, the Christos, as they organize “The Gates” project in New York. Through appreciating local context and history, having good timing, enabling vertical integration and communication and, generally, trusting peoples' imagination and valuing public image, the Christos give business an aesthetic form and they are successful as managers, artists and an Art firm. Untying the ribbons to what defines entrepreneurs and managers, the Christos seem to epitomize entrepreneurial managers operating tactically and imaginatively. Sharpening the focus on entrepreneurship as a spatial practice, in chapter 6 Timon Beyes discusses cases of urban redevelopment to highlight entrepreneurship as a political act that redistributes what is visible, audible and possible in places. Here, reflecting the earlier indication that enterprise discourse or the entrepreneurial role may be played out to sway public opinion and cajole individuals, Beyes reveals Nike Inc. obscured managerial strategies attempting to regulate what was visible, audible and possible behind enterprise discourse: themes of urban experience and notions of public freedom. Then moving back to marginalised entrepreneurial places, Kathryn Campbell draws on feminist writers to identify functionalist discourse as broadcasting a particular image of economic activity – divided from home life and divided according to stereotyped gender roles. Hoping to reposition the family business at the centre of a “people centred” economy, she suggests long‐term and short‐term aspirations, emotion and rationality, and individual and collective aspirations are each reconciled within the family economic unit. With this redistribution and redefinition of what is visible, audible and possible in entrepreneurship studies, it appears the spatial and political nature of entrepreneurial activity, brought to light by Timon Beyes, has been performed by Campbell and embodied in her chapter.

The politics and aesthetics of Entrepreneurial Identities are examined in section 3. As a counterpoint to Maravelias' contention that enterprise discourse reduces everyone to impotent entrepreneurs, chapter 8 by Campbell Jones and André Spicer questions who is not an entrepreneur by evaluating the failure of the Marquis de Sade as an institutional entrepreneur. Their analysis reveals the strategies and discourse of entrepreneurship studies have dislocated the entrepreneur from the social fabric that embeds them; entrepreneurs are not lodged solely in business environments and, to be successful, entrepreneurs must have access to necessary resources and (should) consider collective ethics and values. In contrast to attempts to capture or imitate an entrepreneurial essence, then, it appears pressing for issues of social context and social bearing to be repositioned at the centre of entrepreneurship studies. Then, illuminating the flip side of enterprise discourse as empowering, Lorraine Warren and Alistair Anderson focus on Michael O'Leary as he takes on a “jester” role and performs enterprise discourse to promote the EasyJet brand. Publicly attacking powerful rivals, O'Leary appears to play out the “heroic entrepreneur” and reach collective emotions and sentiments. However, affirming Jones' and Spicer's claim that entrepreneurs should consider collective values, O'Leary trips over himself when he turns to poke fun at the less powerful – the public – and his “jester” aesthetic appears to demand O'Leary to consider more deeply collective values and ethics. New aesthetics of the entrepreneur are again highlighted in chapter 10 as James Revely and Simon Down describe how two individuals counter the stigmatization of their identities through innovating with enterprise discourse, drawing on governmental policy, and performing entrepreneurial acts. Although revolving upon the ideas of Erving Goffman, in this chapter we again glimpse the bearing of Michel de Certeau (1984) on the book's format and characterization of entrepreneurship. Both individuals, faced with an unfavourable situation, draw on their personal and collective histories and their relation to place and, then, through their well‐timed and well‐placed action, innovate and combine resources. In doing so they transform the relations of the places they inhabit in order to “pass” as “indigenous entrepreneurs”.

The final section, “Entrepreneurial Images”, begins to clear the way for life‐affirming entrepreneurship studies. Chapter 11 by Richard Weiskopf and Chris Steyaert plots the becoming of entrepreneurship studies from an era of positivism, to a critical stage that denied the former and condemned efficient labour system‐utopias until, finally, reaching the current station: one where there is hope to address the historical becoming of entrepreneurship studies and to open up the discipline's gates to novel and marginalised faces, places and voices. Having adumbrated a potential narrative history for the discipline, the authors then draw on Michel Foucault and Gilles Deleuze to contribute a new entrepreneurial image in which the event is characterised as a process of folding and refolding historically formed resources and practices as individuals engage in “practical critique” – an “ethico‐aesthetic practice” – through which historically‐formed boundaries to life are evaluated and stylized according to the present and expanded for new horizons. In this way, as the authors take inherited resources and practices in order to imagine how transformative action taken now may actualize a better life to come, the book and chapter embodies the processual nature of the entrepreneurial event. It is unsurprising that the authors also then call readers to emulate the entrepreneurial event by “refusing who we are” in order to say “yes” and make space for new policies, places and identities and, thus, affirm the processual becoming of entrepreneurship studies. In the penultimate chapter by Bent Sørensen, the politics discussed in the first chapter are revisited as Sørensen attends the “Black Rose Trick Hotel” where art, revolution and religion overlap. Here Sørensen suggests that, through releasing the entrepreneurial passion of normal people and by resisting strategic managerialist approaches, the historical situation may be “counter‐actualized”. Thus, debunking the church of managerialism as necessary to align and cajole employees, Sørensen suggests greater trust in our bodies may empower action. Furthermore, Sørensen suggests we displace transcendent system‐utopias in favour of trusting our bodies to generate hope and immanent possibility. Again, Sørensen suggests that, rather than isolating the “strong entrepreneur”, the social body offers support to actualize individuals' imagination through communion with others and experimentation with collective ethics and values. It seems, then, that the picture painted in the first chapter might be being overturned. Freed from the necessity of relying upon strategy and managers and looking for far‐off silver bullets or hero‐inducing essences, all hopeful entrepreneurs need do is trust their imagination and what they already have: themselves, their history, and the social context and time they inhabit. As a counter‐actualization, then, the last chapter inverts the strategies of entrepreneurship studies in order to promote an engagement with the tactics of everyday life as individuals go about making their lives through daily economic activity. Fittingly for a book hoping ultimately to effect the trajectory of entrepreneurship studies, the writing then finishes with an “extroduction” to outline inspiring styles of writing marginalised from scientific writing. By calling researchers to become entrepreneurial themselves – that is, to resist historically formed and inherited scientific practices and the discipline's language in order to stylize such forms to accommodate new aesthetics for life – the editors hope to prime the discipline to say “yes” to a more inclusive, contextually‐embedded and less business‐oriented approaches to research and policy making that might unleash the forces of individuals' passion and desire.

It appears, then, that the editors have established a front – an incision in time – from which action can be taken for a better life to come. As they imply, on the one side lies what offers itself as a resource to be expanded and transformed at the right time and place: history. The historically formed strategies and discourse of the field, establishing and affirming the church of management and defining the entrepreneurial as outside of it (or under it) and neatly isolating the subject into business‐oriented categories could then continue to be overturned. The tactic insinuated? The rest is up to us: we populate the front line and, empowered by our reading, we may generate the life‐affirming discipline we desire by taking action, now, upon what we already have. This excavates my only criticism; being written in a novel language, we may forget that this call for tactical modes of operating – to act now upon what we already have – is, essentially, a call to exploit uncertainty and, thus, become entrepreneurs. Anyone feeling left out, or anyone interested in the historical, temporal and spatial nature of entrepreneurship studies, or how aesthetics and politics interrelate, or, more generally, anyone interested in daily life and economic activity should, then, read this book. It is essential equipment for those wishing to understand and push the boundaries of entrepreneurship scholarship.