The making of entrepreneurial subjectivity in adult education

Critical Analysis

This text offers further evidence in support of the theory of the entrepreneurial self, with a particular emphasis on its creation through discourse: that subjects encounter and use language related to entrepreneurial characteristics, and through this language, form an identity centered on those qualities.

The authors argue that education has been a primary place where entrepreneurial behaviors are fostered, and “the context of education and adult education in particular has become the most relevant site for the making of entrepreneurial subjectivity” (161). Education extends an argument of neoliberal market forces into the context of everyday life. Students “become accountable, active, autonomous, self-directed, responsible and flexible lifelong learners and enterprising subjects” (161).

Academic settings are places where “people tend to be reconfigured as productive economic entrepreneurs of their own lives” (162), yet a cultural push towards ongoing education is evidence of the constant and active nature of subjectification, as even when leaving academia, students continue to shape themselves in the context of self-sufficiency. The authors echo the traits Bröckling claims are fundamental to being entrepreneurial: “socially talented, bold, easygoing, risk-taking, creative, and/or good at practical skills” (162), and subjects learn that equipped with those characteristics, they can get a job.

Fundamental to an argument of an entrepreneurial subject is the formation of this individual, and the authors describe that this formation occurs continually through language. The subject, as a focus, can be known and talked about by oneself, and “the entrepreneurial discourse does not simply describe the person but helps to create individuals, not only as objects but also as subjects”—the discussion is ongoing, wrapped into larger conversations of self, and “retools its targets in order to fit its needs” (162). Curiously, the authors personify the language, giving it a sense of autonomy. This emphasizes subjectification as a force, but minimizes the way in which individuals begin to normalize a label and make it their own; yet the authors also recognize that “subjectification is a process through which we are subjected, and whereby we actively take up as our own the terms of our subjectification” (163). This exemplifies Becker’s process of becoming through naming. The discourse process “defines the appropriate feelings and responses to events” (165), and individuals practice those emotions and behaviors and make them their own.

The authors indicate that the ongoing nature of this process leads to feelings of anxiety and insufficiency. Deviating from an argument of labeling, they see this process, and the resulting emotions and behaviors, as without an end—a student never actually becomes an entrepreneur, and “no matter how hard young people work to achieve the signifiers that can be read as ideal entrepreneurial competence, her/his appropriation is tentative and vulnerable” (167). In design, the label designer often unpacks into these qualities, but in higher education at large, the authors don’t see an end-game of participation.

Educators often label students as “vulnerable and fragile instead of capable” (168), and this labeling further contributes to the construction of a subject; “this vulnerability is a key character of the entrepreneurial discourse… vulnerability is closely tied to individual responsibility, and is central to neoliberal subjectivity” (169). Following an argument of labeling, when a student is labeled vulnerable, they become vulnerable and the authors indicate that this leads to further anxiety, fatigue, and negative emotions: “in the pursuit of excellence, there is an increased risk of failure and being labelled as imperfect and incapable, vulnerable and fragile” (169).