Intertextuality and the Truth of Achebe’s Fiction: Militarised Nigerian Postcolony in Anthills of the Savannah

This paper critically examines the centrality of intertextuality in the production and appreciation of Chinua Achebe’s fiction, mainly, his political novel about militarism, Anthills of the Savannah (1987). Intertextuality deals with relations among texts: no text is an island. The departure from monolithic, author-centred theory of literary criticism to unrestricted and diversified one, following the urgency of poststructuralist lore, precipitated intertextuality. Militarism is the prevalence of the armed forces in the administration or policy of the state. The significance of intertextuality to the creation of postcolonial Nigerian literature establishes the fact that the social facts (part of which militarism) that are being refracted are real. These artistic productions are ‘‘truthful chronicle’’; they are relational in textual make-up. This paper therefore attempts to demonstrate that Achebe’s fiction is a derivative of the corpus of ‘‘verifiable’’, realistic literature on militarism in Nigeria’s postcolony. That is the ‘‘truth’’ about Achebe’s fiction. Thus, the remit of our textual analysis here is Anthills of the Savannah, which largely borders on militarism and political dictatorship.