title: Ambivalence, equivocation and the politics of experimental knowledge: a transdisciplinary neuroscience encounter.
abstract: This article is about a transdisciplinary project between the social, human and life sciences, and the felt experiences of the researchers involved. 'Transdisciplinary' and 'interdisciplinary' research-modes have been the subject of much attention lately--especially as they cross boundaries between the social/humanistic and natural sciences. However, there has been less attention, from within science and technology studies, to what it is actually like to participate in such a research-space. This article contributes to that literature through an empirical reflection on the progress of one collaborative and transdisciplinary project: a novel experiment in neuroscientific lie detection, entangling science and technology studies, literary studies, sociology, anthropology, clinical psychology and cognitive neuroscience. Its central argument is twofold: (1) that, in addition to ideal-type tropes of transdisciplinary conciliation or integration, such projects may also be organized around some more subterranean logics of ambivalence, reserve and critique; (2) that an account of the mundane ressentiment of collaboration allows for a more careful attention to the awkward forms of 'experimental politics' that may flow through, and indeed propel, collaborative work more broadly. Building on these claims, the article concludes with a suggestion that such subterranean logics may be indissociable from some forms of collaboration, and it proposes an ethic of 'equivocal speech' as a way to live with and through these kinds of transdisciplinary experiences.
authors.forename: Des
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Fitzgerald
authors.forename: Melissa M
authors.initials: MM
authors.lastname: Littlefield
authors.forename: Kasper J
authors.initials: KJ
authors.lastname: Knudsen
authors.forename: James
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Tonks
authors.forename: Martin J
authors.initials: MJ
authors.lastname: Dietz
mesh_terms: D001290:Attitude; D003299:Cooperative Behavior; D058025:Interdisciplinary Studies; D019359:Knowledge; D008014:Lie Detection; D009488:Neurosciences; D011057:Politics; D012961:Sociology