Intertextuality and Spirotextuality: Rethinking Textual Interconnections

Abstract

Notwithstanding significant contributions by Julia Kristeva, Mikhail Bakhtin, and Ferdinand de Saussure to an understanding of textual interrelationships, many other scholars continue to explore this phenomenon and this has given rise to a number of claims about intertextuality that border on sophistry. By means of a critical methodology that takes a close look at what intertextuality is all about and certain sophist implications, this foundational essay exposes the shortcomings of intertextuality concerning textual interconnections and establishes spirotextuality as an alternative worldview that is more realistic, more comprehensive, more historically sensitive and more defensible.

Keywords: Intertextuality, metempsychosis, poststructuralism, sophism, spirotextuality