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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.