Constructing an entrepreneurial life: liminality and emotional reflexivity in identity work

ABSTRACT

This paper examines the identity work of a budding entrepreneur through a longitudinal case study based on his ongoing personal reflections as he tries to construct an entrepreneurial life. In particular, we investigate the role of emotional reflexivity and liminality, concepts that give us analytical purchase in exploring the complex dynamics of this identity work. The liminal condition of multiple identity positions enables our informant to experiment with and integrate several parallel identity narratives as he tries on socio-political constructions of ‘the entrepreneur’ for size; and it is the permanence of the liminal condition that makes emotional reflexivity necessary so he can handle the constant lack he experiences. The contribution of our work lies in exploring how the operation of the discourse of enterprise never closes on the centre of subjectivity that is imputed in that discourse, and how our subject, through emotional reflexivity, deals with this fundamental lack.

KEYWORDS:

• identity
• politics
• discourse

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. To mention just one famous case, the book The Republic of Tea: The Story of the Creation of a Business, as Told Through the Personal Letters of Its Founders (Ziegler, Rosenzweig, and Ziegler 1994) relates a sequence of events and actions over a twenty-month period as the founders exchanged faxes with each other. But as Williams (2010, 16–17) suggests, precisely because the authors follow the typical narrative pattern – what Popp and Holt (2013, 53) referred to as ‘the teleological drive to narrative studies’ – that moves the protagonists ‘through various challenges, villains and decision points on their way to the successful venture… the actual narrative itself isn’t very interesting.’

2. For example, one of Robert’s emails starts with the ludic salutation ‘Dear Psychotherapist’. However, the interaction was not always so playful and easy-going. In an email sent a few weeks later, in response to the rather neutral question ‘What’s new?’ Robert snapped back, ‘I’m under enough pressure without having to do “stuff” to make your research better!’ .

3. Enterprise discourse is hegemonic in that we are constantly forced to position ourselves in relation to it; either by trying it on for size, looking for an ‘outside’, or trying to find a socio-political identification that stands in opposition.