TransEpistemology names the reconstruction of a research object through the encounter of several epistemic regimes, none of which is allowed to define the object in advance or remain unchanged by the encounter. It differs from interdisciplinarity because it does not merely coordinate established disciplines, and from methodological pluralism because it requires their categories, scales and evidentiary criteria to be exposed to revision. The operator treats every method as situated: each reveals certain relations while excluding or deforming others. A trans-epistemic process therefore becomes operative only when the friction among partial perspectives produces a more exact object and modifies at least one participating practice. Its result is not a total view or a negotiated average, but an accountable construction in which contradictions are preserved long enough to generate new evidence, distinctions or questions. TransEpistemology succeeds when the object can no longer be adequately described by any contributing discipline in its previous form.
Bibliography
Barad, K. (2007) Meeting the Universe Halfway. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Haraway, D. (1988) ‘Situated Knowledges’, Feminist Studies, 14(3), pp. 575–599.
Klein, J.T. (1990) Interdisciplinarity: History, Theory, and Practice. Detroit: Wayne State University Press.
Latour, B. (2005) Reassembling the Social. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Nicolescu, B. (2002) Manifesto of Transdisciplinarity. Albany: SUNY Press.
Stengers, I. (2018) Another Science Is Possible. Cambridge: Polity.
