The entrepreneurship dispositif: Ethical accountability and production of new labour subjets

Abstract

Although being heterogeneous and deployed in different areas, a series of recent practices converge in the dissemination of a new common sense and a novel foundation for ethical questioning. The article develops the Foucauldian instrument as a device to approach these practices. Following the description of the heuristic potential of this deployment, it is used to study the promotion of entrepreneurship ethics, and more particularly: accountability ethos in a culture of (self)vigilance, repertoires of attributions of behaviors (culture of independence) and psycho-enterprising processes of the self (capitalization of subjectivity). An interwoven complex of heterogeneous practices of this apparatus are identified and the capacity of these practices to enhance dispositions to intensify the commercial and productive relation of the individual with him or herself is discussed.