Paper short abstract:

What if nature was 'transgender'? This is one of the radically new epistemologies of science that I will bring to the surface via an intellectual history of Modern Japan, read through the works of the transnational naturalist and polymath Minakata Kumagusu (1867—1941).

Paper long abstract:

What if nature was 'transgender'? This is one of the radical epistemologies of science that I will bring to the surface via an intellectual history of Modern Japan, read through the work of the transnational naturalist and polymath Minakata Kumagusu (1867—1941). The notion of nature is a contested cultural issue that has shaped the perceptual core of history writing. In the Western philosophical paradigm of modernity, nature has long been perceived through binary gender - mostly female. For example, the 19th-century saw Nietzsche's articulation of 'eternal feminine' where the cycle of life and death was essentialized to women's management since ancient Greek; and the 20th-century history of human emotion was strongly influenced by Freudian hysteria and irrational female analysands as opposed to cultured rational male analysts. Such gendering of nature has long operated as a normalising power that subjugates those whose 'nature' cannot be abided by the dichotomised languages of science. This paper proposes a critical analysis of epistemological knowledge once imagined by the transdisciplinary naturalist Kumagusu that overcomes the normalising social framework and stigma of modernity. I foreground my argument through discussion of his interests in sexology, epistemology, and Esoteric Buddhism imagined through the existential condition of mycetozoa, a type of slime moulds he examined, whose gender transcends male-female binary.

This is a view of nature that occupied intellectual space of alternative modernity, beyond the West-centric paradigm of the history of science and natural philosophy. The paper not only offers new historiography on works of Kumagusu but also proposes a fresh perspective on the ongoing histories of environmental thoughts.