Abstract
This is an unusual and interesting book, which explores a timely and relevant topic. It brings together a broad range of papers by scholars from different disciplinary backgrounds, each of whom is concerned with some aspect of identity deception. The editors define the imposter as ‘a person who pretends to be someone else in order to deceive others’ (p. 3) and suggest that this represents an archetypal figure, comparable to Simmel’s stranger or Baudelaire’s flâneur. Imposters appear throughout society, taking various forms across the realms of media, science, politics, culture and everyday life. They can include non-human agents, such as technologies, artefacts and documents. However, the imposter is not merely a symbolic figure: The book examines the practice of ‘impostering’ as a form of meaningful social action. This applies both to the intentions and motivations of the imposter and to the consequential responses of those whom they deceive. Impostering is a relational mode of social interaction, involving a sequence of dramaturgical moves from deceiving through suspecting, accusing, claiming, counter-claiming, denying and detecting.
A central argument of the book is that the imposter concept can be used as an analytic tool, with which to think about social relations and cultural forms. Imposters challenge, threaten or disrupt the ordinary business of systems and networks, preventing sociation from proceeding as usual. As a deviant aberration from normative conduct, impostering reveals the unspoken rules and assumptions of the interaction order. This brings into question the disjuncture between appearance and reality and resonates with theoretical debates about identity construction and performative authenticity. However, rather than pursue this line of micro-sociological enquiry, the book focuses on how the concept applies to various contemporary issues in empirical domains: scams, hacking, data forgery, political conspiracies, media fact-checking and technological surveillance.
Here, I think the authors miss an opportunity to develop a theoretical strand. There is a substantial, established literature on identity deception within symbolic interactionism, and Goffman wrote extensively about the game-like techniques and strategies of dramaturgical self-presentation used by actors to manage impressions in everyday life. While the editors show some recognition of the latter, with an opening discussion of the performative drama of staging authenticity, the former body of micro-sociological theory has been completely ignored. The introductory chapter offers a broad sketch overview of how imposterdom relates to different areas of social research, such as science and technology studies, political sociology and media and cultural studies, which anticipates the content of the authored chapters. It also outlines the perspectives of dramaturgy and ethnomethodology, citing some famous studies such as Garfinkel’s Agnes and Rosenhan’s pseudopatients. However, these theoretical ideas are then dropped and not revisited in the remaining material of the text. It would have been good to have included some contributions that pursued the micro-sociological legacy by exploring processes of impostering in face-to-face encounters. For example, there have been some recent empirical studies of young women’s lying, family secrets and transgender boundary work that follow in the symbolic interaction tradition.
Similarly, scant attention is paid to the subjective lived experience of being (or feeling like) an imposter. Although there is a brief mention of the Imposter Syndrome, a self-conscious state of doubt about one’s own interactional competence and accompanying fear of being found out, this is treated dismissively as mere pop psychology, trivialising its serious impact. For example, in academia itself, women and people of colour are more prone to this experience, which suggests deeper organisational structures and institutional forces at work. Instead, this book theorises imposters and impostering from the outside, as objects of curiosity: The analytical tool is applied from a detached, neutral standpoint, reflecting assumptive claims to epistemological privilege.
Nevertheless, the collection does provide a wide and varied selection of fascinating studies, demonstrating the multidisciplinary reach of the imposter concept. The editors have divided the chapters into four categorical sections: Restructuring Revelations (exposures of documentary fraud), Insatiable Obsessions (deceptive identity performances), Sustained Suspicions (sociopolitical discourses of governmentality) and Unresolvable Disruptions (alternative cultural visions and utopian world views). Anticipating these themes, the book opens with a discussion of the Salisbury poisonings case involving two alleged Russian spies. This raises questions of disputed identity, claims and denials, accounting procedures and journalistic reporting. There are then 12 substantive chapters from an eclectic range of authors, spanning a diverse landscape of social theory.
Some of the chapters have an immediate allure, as they discuss famous news stories, political scandals or resonant personal tales. For example, academic readers may be drawn to Maarten Derksen’s account of the Dutch psychologist, Diederik Stapel, who fabricated the results of his own survey research. Ironically, the ritualised procedure he devised for doing this, involving driving to fake locations and manually entering statistical data, sounds more elaborate and time-consuming than the real work would have been. Another chapter by Brian Rappert examines the entertainment world of stage magicians, conjurors and illusionists. As well as observing the performative spectacles of celebrity artists, such as Houdini, David Blaine and Derren Brown, he reports on his own practice as an amateur, learning the tricks of the trade. The impostering processes found in this context, such as misdirection, showmanship and stealthy sleight of hand, mirror some of the strategic techniques that Goffman observed in everyday social interaction. They also chime with symbolic interactionist studies of professional socialisation and trajectories of career ‘becoming’.
Other chapters hold relevance to current political debates, reminding us of the recursive interplay between micro- and macro-levels of analysis. Fredy Mora-Gámez addresses the issue of immigration, refugees and border policing, using the example of Columbian ‘gatecrasher’ migrants. Olga Restrepo Forero and Malcolm Ashmore reveal the dangers of mistaken identity from the perspective of the accused, drawing on the case of an innocent man’s ID card being confused with that of a notorious guerrilla fighter. Caroline Rosenthal’s chapter exposes two cases of devious ethnic impersonation, whereby White North American men wrote fake biographies of indigenous peoples. Kristina Grünenberg examines the laboratory testing and development of biometric facial recognition devices, such as infrared cameras, fingerprinting and iris-checking. She considers the irony that, in order to prevent criminal imposters from outsmarting the technologies with ‘spoof’ identities, scientists must impersonate the same techniques themselves. James Kaufman takes the concept into the UK policy arena with his discussion of the discourse of suspicion surrounding welfare benefit recipients. He argues that the accusations of cheating, skiving and scrounging express a deeper cultural climate of anxiety about insincere claims of need.
A third set of contributions are quirky and esoteric, exploring more symbolic forms of impostering in spheres of cultural life. Catalinje Coopmans uses Actor–Network Theory to describe the assemblages of non-human agents involved in the manufacturing of unreal material things. She gives the examples of plant-based vegan meat, fraudulent certificates, fake museum relics and forged online reviews. Mandy Merck considers fandom as a quasi-religious practice of worship, noting the mimetic practices through which fans emulate the lifestyles of their celebrity idols. Tribute acts, lookalikes and comic impersonators all extend the idea of legitimate impostering. Merck questions where we should draw the line between sincere admiration and malevolent intention in these practices of pretending to be someone else. Johan Lindquist investigates the hidden underbelly of digital capitalism, through the secret trade and marketing of social media profiles. Fake followers are bought and sold, along with ‘likes’, comments and pictures, to create the impression of popularity and achieve ‘Insta-fame’. Mattijs van de Port discusses fraudulent claims of spirit possession and other paranormal phenomena. Finally, a particularly interesting chapter by Martin Abbott and David Large examines the cuckoo as a cultural motif in literature and folklore. They suggest that the creature’s habit of brood parasitism (laying its eggs in another bird’s nest) is emblematic of morally meaningful social actions: cheating, usurpation, exploitation and unfair advantage. Here, I was reminded of Goffman’s comparisons between human and animal behaviour and of his ethological metaphors to depict strategic gameplay.
The book’s structure matches its theme, with a conventional order of chapters transgressed by an oddly written postscript that takes us by surprise. Rather than a regular, concluding summary discussion, we are presented with a scripted dialogue between various imposter characters (Agnes, Stapel, the cuckoo, etc.), who morph into caricatures of theoretical figures (Goffman and Garfinkel) and in-house hoaxers (Sokal), before finally unmasking themselves as the editorial team. Playing with the format of academic text itself, the authors reiterate their point that impostering operates as a disordering device: a conceptual tool that challenges, disrupts and regenerates expected social orders. While not convinced by the suggested need for a new field of Imposter Studies, I do see the potential usefulness of this new conceptual tool. Thinking with imposters is a refreshing and original way of doing social theory, which playfully elucidates illusionary ideas.