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KNEELING IN TIME: A SOCIAL-SYMBOLIC APPROACH TO RHETORICAL HISTORY AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF CULTURAL ENTREPRENEURIAL IDENTITY
Dissertation

KNEELING IN TIME: A SOCIAL-SYMBOLIC APPROACH TO RHETORICAL HISTORY AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF CULTURAL ENTREPRENEURIAL IDENTITY

Kassandra A Rebello
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Washington State University
2026
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FINAL dissertation 3.31DownloadView
Open Access

Abstract

authenticity chronotopes cultural entrepreneurship legitimacy narrative identity rhetorical history Organization theory
Substantial amounts of research have been conducted in almost every subfield of management and organizations in an effort to understand authenticity and legitimacy. Though not extensively studied together, our understanding of their inextricable connection is becoming increasingly necessary. This criticality comes in the wake of our culture shift into a post-modern truth era. Contemporary culture in this era is marked by a decreasing emphasis on rationality and science and increasing emphasis on personal emotional appeals. This context breeds emotionally salient, evaluation dependent phenomena like ‘cancel culture’, a social media-based threat attempting to thwart social transgressions. Another example of this kind of phenomena is ‘meme culture’, marked by deploying satirical web content to actively participate in shaping social commentary and cultural narratives. These kinds of destabilizing phenomena provide the impetus for our need to understand how authenticity and legitimacy can be managed while reconstructing identity in this context. Researchers have frequently theorized authenticity and legitimacy as opposing sides of a single force, citing how their tensions create issues around acceptance of innovation and change, yet we have little understanding on how this relational tension can be managed. To address this theoretical gap, this dissertation theorizes narrative identification through chronotopic rhetorical history, a process of connection through positioning identities within broader historical trajectories using culturally meaningful temporal frameworks. These findings demonstrate how authenticity and legitimacy evaluations result from chronotopic positioning, rather than from individual characteristics or attributes of actors. By introducing rhetorical history as a mechanism for narrative identification, attention is shifted from the identity claims themselves to the historical narratives and cultural frameworks that shape their interpretation.

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