Thinking with Imposters: The Imposter as Analytic

Abstract

What insights can the figure of the imposter provide into the social relations and cultural forms in the settings in which they emerge? How might ‘thinking with imposters’ be an important tool of analysis in the social sciences and humanities? This editorial essay sets the stage for working with these questions. It argues that the imposter is a figure that provides an important opportunity for thinking differently in social theory, much in the same way as other key conceptual figures like the parasite have done previously. Imposters tend to have been used in social theory primarily as a form of deviance which reveals an underlying order. The essay argues that thinking with imposters encourages us instead to emphasise uncertainty and to deepen our understanding of the dynamic relations in which appearance/reality puzzles are played out between imposters and their audiences.