Exploring Intertextuality and Authorial Intent: A Comparative Analysis of Baaba Sillah’s Pencum Taakusaan and Dabbali Gi

https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17392137

Abstract

Baaba Sillah’s 2010 publications: Pencum Taakusaan (poetry) and Dabbali Gi (novel) contain passages that are identical in both content and structure. Is it a coincidence or is it by choice? This study, therefore, investigates how Sillah deliberately transfers these selected poetic texts from Pencum Taakusaan into the prose narrative of Dabbali Gi, reshaping them as thematic and symbolic elements within the fictional world. A close reading of poems like “Griot’s Lament,” “The Draft,” and “Gaza’s Body Parts” to explore how these texts incorporate and reshape themselves demonstrates that these poems become important spaces for remembering cultural heritage and expressing opposition to political issues. The approach in this study is anchored on Julia Kristeva’s concepts of intertextuality to show how Sillah’s prose and poetry engage in dialogue with each other. The paper uses a postcolonial theoretical framework to argue that Sillah’s approach destabilizes colonial hierarchies of genre and voice while emphasizing the psychological and historical effects of colonialism and neocolonial violence. Sillah’s intertextual strategy becomes not only a tool for reclaiming agency but also a tool for challenging literary boundaries imposed by colonial epistemologies.

Key words: intertextuality; authorial intent; Dabbali Gi; Pencum Taakusaan; Baaba Sillah