In search of the lost identity. About the Kafkian Zionism.

Abstract

In 2016 and after a long four-year litigation, Kafka's manuscripts ceased to be private property and belonged to the National Library of Israel. Following this court ruling, there were those who wondered if this was what the writer would have really wanted, thus reopening the already old debate about the writer's Zionism. The present work settles into this controversy to refute what, today, is one of the most widespread hypotheses in this regard: that of an ambivalent Kafka, who would never have finished deciding between Zionism and anti-Zionism. According to Sultana Wahnón, a careful reading of the Letter to the Father and other testimonial texts allows us to differentiate two major stages in the writer's life, one of which would have been decidedly Zionist, although from a very personal position, which in this work it is proposed to give it the name Kafkaesque Zionism.