Postscript: Thinking with Imposters – What Were They Thinking?

The authorship of the postscript is unclear. It is, allegedly, written by a roster of Imposters that feature in the previous chapters of the volume. Yet, it also contains the transcript of a conversation between Harold Garfinkel, Erving Goffman and Alan Sokal. And, in a twist, the editors of the volume themselves appear as part of this exchange. Hence, the ambiguous identity of the authorial ‘we’, underscoring the indeterminancy characteristic of the imposter phenomenon. Despite the lack of a clear provenance, the postscript provides a bookend to a volume teeming with examples of the significance of the imposter for rethinking social theory. The postscript additionally suggests that the figure of the imposter offers a challenge to the very idea of social theory. The figure of the imposter requires us to think and see social and cultural forms differently.