Bloom/Split/Dissolve: Jellyfish, H. D., and Multispecies Justice in Anthropocene Seas

This essay argues that representations of jellyfish in the work of modernist poet and novelist H. D. offer insights for approaching the problem of multispecies justice in the context of Anthropocene seas. Drawing on work in the blue humanities and feminist science studies, I suggest that in H. D.'s interwar writings, especially Notes on Thought and Vision (1919) and Palimpsest (1926), her use of the jellyfish body as an epistemological metaphor for seeing double serves as an instructive model for managing the ambiguous and dissonant meanings the figure of the jellyfish implies for multispecies belonging in the Anthropocene present.