Cut Bodies: Unica Zürn’s Agential (Sur)Realism

This article argues that mid-century Surrealist German author Unica Zürn’s writing on the fetus and pregnancy anticipates New Materialist analyses of the liveliness of matter and the interactions of biology and history. Using philosopher-physicist Karen Barad’s theories of Agential Realism as a lens, I unite a close reading of key moments in Zürn’s oeuvre with an examination of medical practices in the midcentury and the lingering history of Nazi eugenics, demonstrating how politics and science come to both shape and deform the body in Zürn’s prose. Through the interactions of both language and material, the bodies of the mother and fetus begin to double each other, and holocaust atrocities and abortion practices take on uncanny resonances.