Who are the brain police? Reading pessimism into emancipatory entrepreneuring with Frank Zappa

Lauri Laine

Entrepreneurship & Regional Development, 2025, vol. 37, issue 7-8, 1069-1084

Abstract: This paper uses a selection of rock lyrics by Frank Zappa to read pessimism into emancipatory entrepreneuring. Our approach is meant to complement an arguable optimistic bias in the literature, which emphasizes how entrepreneurs overcome or abolish constraints to autonomy. Pessimistic readings, in contrast, could enrich and improve our understanding by highlighting how constraints are disclosed. Our reading of Zappa’s lyrics brings to the fore intellectual constraints as inherent to the entrepreneurial dreams for autonomy. The paper ends with a discussion on how to account for the interdependency of constraints and autonomy, and how pessimistic readings could ‘push back’ the emancipatory agenda in entrepreneurship studies to include the discovery of constraints to autonomy.

Date: 2025
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DOI: 10.1080/08985626.2025.2459221

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