Sarah’s Laughter: Kafka’s Abraham

Chris Danta

DOI:10.1353/MOD.2008.0048

Corpus ID: 170492502

Sarah’s Laughter: Kafka’s Abraham

@article{Danta2008SarahsLK,
  title={Sarah’s Laughter: Kafka’s Abraham},
  author={Chris Danta},
  journal={Modernism/modernity},
  year={2008},
  volume={15},
  pages={343 - 359}
}

Chris Danta

Published 2008

Philosophy

Modernism/modernity

"My laughter is a concrete wall," says Kafka to Gustav Janouch. In this paper, I claim that laughter offers us a way to appeal to our own bodies as a basis of doubt. I try to substantiate this general proposition by examining Kafka's identification with the story of Sarah laughing uncontrollably at God's promise of a child in Genesis 18. I argue that Kafka finds in the figure of Sarah's laughter not only a most poignant precursor to his own skepticism of the body, but also a basis to retell (in… CONTINUE READING

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