Back and here again: Heresy and the search for a philosophical entrepreneurship

Abstract

This paper contributes to the development of a ‘philosophical entrepreneurship’ that goes beyond a concern with theory building. Given that theoretical activity in entrepreneurship is manifestly diverse and pluralistic and not socially integrated and cognitively unified, the discussion in the paper is framed in the context of nomadic theorising as heretical, and specifically in terms of the pilgrimage as the search for enlightenment as we seek to come to terms with the implications of posthumanist inquiry. Drawing on the metaphor of the map and the territory as an organising and communicative device, the core argument of the paper is structured around six key ‘stations’ on the journey, each of which is illustrated by one or more ‘vignettes’ drawn from philosophy, literary criticism, the aesthetics of landscape, imaginative literature and the history of art. Each of these six stations are in turn related to six practices of nomadic theorising, or transpositional research. These work on and through our imaginary worlds and the imaginary forms that its content (images, ideas, representations, forms, terms, values, attitudes, practices and so on) gives rise to and is supported by. As the basis for a philosophical entrepreneurship, this discussion is a reminder that we are experiencing events that are hard to fathom, and that our own stories are embedded and embodied in the world we live in. • This paper calls for a renewed emphasis on a philosophical entrepreneurship. • The entrepreneurship researcher-scholar is a heretic as a challenger of orthodoxy. • Nomadic theory is a necessary response to the challenge of accelerating change. • Six transpositional practices provide ‘hopeful disruptions’ in how we see and understand the world. • Identifies seven key issues in a call for action for a philosophical entrepreneurship.