Notes on Political Ontology and the Imposter

Dominant discourses of imposter syndrome consider either the psychic or material registers of imposters, our intervention in this article identifies a third register on which the psychic and material depend: the ontological. Imposter syndrome, we argue, is defined by three positions: (1) the figure of the scholar—who is characterized by self-actualization, freedom and belonging, which relegates it to the positive ontological position; (2) the subject with imposter syndrome—who is characterized by an experience of deferred capacity and contested belonging; and (3) the imposter proper—who is characterized by negation, incapacity and unbelonging, relegating it to an ontological absence, or a spectre that is not seen but structures presence nonetheless. In order to make this argument, we draw a parallel between Sara-Maria Sorentino's (2023) theory of incapacity within the oikos, which she argues is a spectral position, with the imposter at the university. The imposter proper is the position against which the second and third position are produced. By locating the imposter proper as a separate position that is not only defined and determined by material or psychic constraints but also ontological violences, we develop the argument that when one cures imposter syndrome, the imposter still remains. Although the experience of being an imposter is not exclusive to the university, we take the North American university as our case study because the rhetoric of the imposter is so ubiquitous across academic institutions.