Small Axe Project
@smallaxeproject.bsky.social
A Caribbean Platform of Criticism
https://smallaxe.net
https://smallaxe.net
Commemorating and critiquing the author’s nearly three-month stint living with and being possessed by the Trinidad and Tobago Memorial Quilt, this essay demonstrates a way not only to write about a Caribbean AIDS quilt, but to approach quilting as methodology.
Read it @ Duke tinyurl.com/2jmmkb64
Read it @ Duke tinyurl.com/2jmmkb64
November 9, 2025 at 10:27 PM
Commemorating and critiquing the author’s nearly three-month stint living with and being possessed by the Trinidad and Tobago Memorial Quilt, this essay demonstrates a way not only to write about a Caribbean AIDS quilt, but to approach quilting as methodology.
Read it @ Duke tinyurl.com/2jmmkb64
Read it @ Duke tinyurl.com/2jmmkb64
This essay explores the representation of same-sex eroticism and love between women in Ana-Maurine Lara’s Erzulie’s Skirt (2008) which offers a decolonial poetics that counters the whitewashing, anti-Blackness, and Christian nationalism of Dominican identity.
Read It @ Duke tinyurl.com/yc8mmwfj
Read It @ Duke tinyurl.com/yc8mmwfj
November 4, 2025 at 10:27 PM
This essay explores the representation of same-sex eroticism and love between women in Ana-Maurine Lara’s Erzulie’s Skirt (2008) which offers a decolonial poetics that counters the whitewashing, anti-Blackness, and Christian nationalism of Dominican identity.
Read It @ Duke tinyurl.com/yc8mmwfj
Read It @ Duke tinyurl.com/yc8mmwfj
This essay revisits Nancy Morejón’s Lengua de pájaro not only because “it is a book of which little has been said” but because it provides a compelling lens to examine the intricate dynamics of inclusion and exclusion in the Cuban cultural landscape of the 1960s.
Read it @ Duke tinyurl.com/4mt744sr
Read it @ Duke tinyurl.com/4mt744sr
October 29, 2025 at 6:53 PM
This essay revisits Nancy Morejón’s Lengua de pájaro not only because “it is a book of which little has been said” but because it provides a compelling lens to examine the intricate dynamics of inclusion and exclusion in the Cuban cultural landscape of the 1960s.
Read it @ Duke tinyurl.com/4mt744sr
Read it @ Duke tinyurl.com/4mt744sr
With great pleasure, the Small Axe Project welcomes Simone A. James Alexander to the sx salon editorial team, taking over the role of Book Reviews Editor from Ronald Cummings. Welcome Simone!
smallaxe.net/sxblog
smallaxe.net/sxblog
October 27, 2025 at 11:33 PM
With great pleasure, the Small Axe Project welcomes Simone A. James Alexander to the sx salon editorial team, taking over the role of Book Reviews Editor from Ronald Cummings. Welcome Simone!
smallaxe.net/sxblog
smallaxe.net/sxblog
This essay by C.C. McKee is grounded in the unsolved early modern mathematical problem of “squaring the circle” to explore geometrical form as a force that undergirded colonial violence in the Caribbean.
October 22, 2025 at 2:06 AM
This essay by C.C. McKee is grounded in the unsolved early modern mathematical problem of “squaring the circle” to explore geometrical form as a force that undergirded colonial violence in the Caribbean.
This essay by Carlos Garrido Castellano attempts to answer two main questions: What might contemporary art from the Caribbean look like? And how does contemporaneity emerge when scrutinized from the point of view of the Caribbean?
Read it @ Duke tinyurl.com/ys4zuf6n
Read it @ Duke tinyurl.com/ys4zuf6n
October 18, 2025 at 7:20 PM
This essay by Carlos Garrido Castellano attempts to answer two main questions: What might contemporary art from the Caribbean look like? And how does contemporaneity emerge when scrutinized from the point of view of the Caribbean?
Read it @ Duke tinyurl.com/ys4zuf6n
Read it @ Duke tinyurl.com/ys4zuf6n
Small Axe 77 is now available!
Angel Otero's abstract work "Prose" is featured on the cover and in the visual essay.
Check out all the contents on smallaxe.net
Angel Otero's abstract work "Prose" is featured on the cover and in the visual essay.
Check out all the contents on smallaxe.net
October 3, 2025 at 1:14 PM
Small Axe 77 is now available!
Angel Otero's abstract work "Prose" is featured on the cover and in the visual essay.
Check out all the contents on smallaxe.net
Angel Otero's abstract work "Prose" is featured on the cover and in the visual essay.
Check out all the contents on smallaxe.net
Watch the video of “patería/ makoumé/ kambrada/ friend & family,” a conversation between Jacqueline Couti, Krystal Ghisyawan, Wigbertson Julian Isenia, and Lawrence La Fountain-Stokes, moderated by Ryan Cecil Jobson and Vanessa Pérez-Rosario.
smallaxe.net/sxprojects/k...
smallaxe.net/sxprojects/k...
September 24, 2025 at 7:28 PM
Watch the video of “patería/ makoumé/ kambrada/ friend & family,” a conversation between Jacqueline Couti, Krystal Ghisyawan, Wigbertson Julian Isenia, and Lawrence La Fountain-Stokes, moderated by Ryan Cecil Jobson and Vanessa Pérez-Rosario.
smallaxe.net/sxprojects/k...
smallaxe.net/sxprojects/k...
🗓️ Mark your calendars!
Join us in this conversation between José del Valle and SX editor David Scott about Stuart Hall’s Voice: Intimations of an Ethics of Receptive Generosity.📍Friday, September 26th, 5:00-6:00 pm at @thegraduatecenter.bsky.social
Join us in this conversation between José del Valle and SX editor David Scott about Stuart Hall’s Voice: Intimations of an Ethics of Receptive Generosity.📍Friday, September 26th, 5:00-6:00 pm at @thegraduatecenter.bsky.social
September 16, 2025 at 9:43 PM
🗓️ Mark your calendars!
Join us in this conversation between José del Valle and SX editor David Scott about Stuart Hall’s Voice: Intimations of an Ethics of Receptive Generosity.📍Friday, September 26th, 5:00-6:00 pm at @thegraduatecenter.bsky.social
Join us in this conversation between José del Valle and SX editor David Scott about Stuart Hall’s Voice: Intimations of an Ethics of Receptive Generosity.📍Friday, September 26th, 5:00-6:00 pm at @thegraduatecenter.bsky.social
The essay responds to the critiques by Gavin Arnall, Jackqueline Frost, and Grégory Pierrot of the author’s The Price of Slavery: Capitalism and Revolution in the Caribbean (2022).
Read @ Duke tinyurl.com/2mxde23r
Read @ Duke tinyurl.com/2mxde23r
September 11, 2025 at 7:57 PM
The essay responds to the critiques by Gavin Arnall, Jackqueline Frost, and Grégory Pierrot of the author’s The Price of Slavery: Capitalism and Revolution in the Caribbean (2022).
Read @ Duke tinyurl.com/2mxde23r
Read @ Duke tinyurl.com/2mxde23r
Welcome Roque Raquel Salas Rivera, who joins the Small Axe Project as the incoming sx salon Creative Editor. Roque is a poet of alluring imagery and a translator of distinction, and it is a great honor to have him in our community in this capacity. Welcome Roque!
smallaxe.net/content/1362
smallaxe.net/content/1362
September 9, 2025 at 4:54 PM
Welcome Roque Raquel Salas Rivera, who joins the Small Axe Project as the incoming sx salon Creative Editor. Roque is a poet of alluring imagery and a translator of distinction, and it is a great honor to have him in our community in this capacity. Welcome Roque!
smallaxe.net/content/1362
smallaxe.net/content/1362
Taking exception with Nick Nesbitt’s premise qua Marx —that only free labor can produce surplus value— this essay by Grégory Pierrot argues that the polymorphic nature of slavery belies Marx’s absolutist correlation of free labor and surplus value.
Read @ Duke tinyurl.com/24sbm5rm
Read @ Duke tinyurl.com/24sbm5rm
September 7, 2025 at 3:09 PM
Taking exception with Nick Nesbitt’s premise qua Marx —that only free labor can produce surplus value— this essay by Grégory Pierrot argues that the polymorphic nature of slavery belies Marx’s absolutist correlation of free labor and surplus value.
Read @ Duke tinyurl.com/24sbm5rm
Read @ Duke tinyurl.com/24sbm5rm
Jackqueline Frost discusses the political poignancy of Aimé Césaire’s Marxist humanism through a reading of his 1950 Discourse on Colonialism. All of it in an open dialogue with Nick Nesbitt’s The Price of Slavery: Capitalism and Revolution in the Caribbean (2022)
Read @ Duke tinyurl.com/3dzejhxm
Read @ Duke tinyurl.com/3dzejhxm
September 3, 2025 at 2:25 PM
Jackqueline Frost discusses the political poignancy of Aimé Césaire’s Marxist humanism through a reading of his 1950 Discourse on Colonialism. All of it in an open dialogue with Nick Nesbitt’s The Price of Slavery: Capitalism and Revolution in the Caribbean (2022)
Read @ Duke tinyurl.com/3dzejhxm
Read @ Duke tinyurl.com/3dzejhxm
This piece by Gavin Arnall enters into critical dialogue with Nick Nesbitt’s The Price of Slavery: Capitalism and Revolution in the Caribbean (2022), by exploring the original insights but also the blind spots of the book.
Read @ Duke tinyurl.com/y3p8e53r
Read @ Duke tinyurl.com/y3p8e53r
August 31, 2025 at 6:06 PM
This piece by Gavin Arnall enters into critical dialogue with Nick Nesbitt’s The Price of Slavery: Capitalism and Revolution in the Caribbean (2022), by exploring the original insights but also the blind spots of the book.
Read @ Duke tinyurl.com/y3p8e53r
Read @ Duke tinyurl.com/y3p8e53r
“Perhaps it is our ancestral connection to Mysteries that has allowed us to endure the traumas and institutionally induced amnesia incited by the violence of coloniality,” writes Lisando Curiel in the visualities section of our current issue.
Read @ Duke tinyurl.com/2wmprx7p
Read @ Duke tinyurl.com/2wmprx7p
August 28, 2025 at 10:38 PM
“Perhaps it is our ancestral connection to Mysteries that has allowed us to endure the traumas and institutionally induced amnesia incited by the violence of coloniality,” writes Lisando Curiel in the visualities section of our current issue.
Read @ Duke tinyurl.com/2wmprx7p
Read @ Duke tinyurl.com/2wmprx7p
Mervyn Morris writes on “Reading Louise Bennett, Seriously,” questioning some ideas he expressed 60 years ago, having learned from Bennett’s Jamaica Labrish (1966), and focuses on Bennett’s performance choices and on her sociopolitical commentary.
Read @ Duke tinyurl.com/yhn4k2s6
Read @ Duke tinyurl.com/yhn4k2s6
August 17, 2025 at 9:13 PM
Mervyn Morris writes on “Reading Louise Bennett, Seriously,” questioning some ideas he expressed 60 years ago, having learned from Bennett’s Jamaica Labrish (1966), and focuses on Bennett’s performance choices and on her sociopolitical commentary.
Read @ Duke tinyurl.com/yhn4k2s6
Read @ Duke tinyurl.com/yhn4k2s6
This essay by Ben Etherington considers Mervyn Morris’s sustained efforts to decolonize practical criticism. It starts by revisiting the canonical references that play a central role in Morris’s early critical intervention, “On Reading Louise Bennett, Seriously.”
Read @ Duke tinyurl.com/ypnrszrc
Read @ Duke tinyurl.com/ypnrszrc
August 16, 2025 at 4:39 PM
This essay by Ben Etherington considers Mervyn Morris’s sustained efforts to decolonize practical criticism. It starts by revisiting the canonical references that play a central role in Morris’s early critical intervention, “On Reading Louise Bennett, Seriously.”
Read @ Duke tinyurl.com/ypnrszrc
Read @ Duke tinyurl.com/ypnrszrc
Mervyn Morris is well known as a poet, mentor, and literary critic. Carolyn J. Allen examines a lesser-known area of his activity as a theater reviewer, based on selected drafts over the most active decade of theater production in Jamaica.
Read @ Duke tinyurl.com/5573fppw
Read @ Duke tinyurl.com/5573fppw
August 11, 2025 at 11:04 PM
Mervyn Morris is well known as a poet, mentor, and literary critic. Carolyn J. Allen examines a lesser-known area of his activity as a theater reviewer, based on selected drafts over the most active decade of theater production in Jamaica.
Read @ Duke tinyurl.com/5573fppw
Read @ Duke tinyurl.com/5573fppw
In “Mervyn Morris on Orality and Literature in the Critical Landscape,” Carol Bailey examines Morris’s field-defining and groundbreaking contribution to Caribbean literary and cultural criticism, with particular emphasis on the decolonizing orientations of his work.
Read @ Duke tinyurl.com/msm6zadw
Read @ Duke tinyurl.com/msm6zadw
August 6, 2025 at 6:23 PM
In “Mervyn Morris on Orality and Literature in the Critical Landscape,” Carol Bailey examines Morris’s field-defining and groundbreaking contribution to Caribbean literary and cultural criticism, with particular emphasis on the decolonizing orientations of his work.
Read @ Duke tinyurl.com/msm6zadw
Read @ Duke tinyurl.com/msm6zadw
In this interview by Wayne Modest and Esmee Shoutens, artist Iris Kensmil explores recurring themes in her practice, such as Black feminist memory, histories of Black emancipation in the Netherlands, and the genre of portraiture as a practice of presencing.
Read @ Duke tinyurl.com/yc34vc9a
Read @ Duke tinyurl.com/yc34vc9a
August 3, 2025 at 11:45 PM
In this interview by Wayne Modest and Esmee Shoutens, artist Iris Kensmil explores recurring themes in her practice, such as Black feminist memory, histories of Black emancipation in the Netherlands, and the genre of portraiture as a practice of presencing.
Read @ Duke tinyurl.com/yc34vc9a
Read @ Duke tinyurl.com/yc34vc9a
René Johannes Kooiker focuses on the magazine Watapana, which published poetry, criticism, fiction, and translations from the Dutch Caribbean between 1968 and 1972, and hosted debates about the politics of language in the Papiamento- and Dutch-speaking islands.
Read @ Duke tinyurl.com/ycxah3bx
Read @ Duke tinyurl.com/ycxah3bx
July 28, 2025 at 6:33 PM
René Johannes Kooiker focuses on the magazine Watapana, which published poetry, criticism, fiction, and translations from the Dutch Caribbean between 1968 and 1972, and hosted debates about the politics of language in the Papiamento- and Dutch-speaking islands.
Read @ Duke tinyurl.com/ycxah3bx
Read @ Duke tinyurl.com/ycxah3bx
Introduciendo ideas de la metamorfosis del género y la plantación, Celenis Rodríguez propone un nuevo abordaje sobre el género y la formación de las subjetividades sexo genéricas de la población negra esclavizada en la plantación caribeña.
Read @ Duke tinyurl.com/4abn6yue
Read @ Duke tinyurl.com/4abn6yue
July 25, 2025 at 8:06 PM
Introduciendo ideas de la metamorfosis del género y la plantación, Celenis Rodríguez propone un nuevo abordaje sobre el género y la formación de las subjetividades sexo genéricas de la población negra esclavizada en la plantación caribeña.
Read @ Duke tinyurl.com/4abn6yue
Read @ Duke tinyurl.com/4abn6yue
Aristides Dimitriou explores how the “epistemological deficiency” that characterizes the past becomes a necessary part of the historical imagination—the historical content becomes part of the narrative form through which Édouard Glissant envisions the past.
Read @ Duke tinyurl.com/mn9vmbad
Read @ Duke tinyurl.com/mn9vmbad
July 22, 2025 at 5:29 PM
Aristides Dimitriou explores how the “epistemological deficiency” that characterizes the past becomes a necessary part of the historical imagination—the historical content becomes part of the narrative form through which Édouard Glissant envisions the past.
Read @ Duke tinyurl.com/mn9vmbad
Read @ Duke tinyurl.com/mn9vmbad
In the preface, our editor David Scott reflects on memory and time, and what they bring with them when it comes to remembering what matters. The text invites us all to metaphorically —and literally— pay a visit at the Library of Things We Forgot To Remember.
Read it @ Duke tinyurl.com/5d7r8jkm
Read it @ Duke tinyurl.com/5d7r8jkm
July 20, 2025 at 5:44 PM
In the preface, our editor David Scott reflects on memory and time, and what they bring with them when it comes to remembering what matters. The text invites us all to metaphorically —and literally— pay a visit at the Library of Things We Forgot To Remember.
Read it @ Duke tinyurl.com/5d7r8jkm
Read it @ Duke tinyurl.com/5d7r8jkm
sx 76 has shipped!
It includes essays by Aristides Dimitriou, Celenis Rodríguez, René Kooiker, Sophie Maríñez, and Wayne Modest and Esmee Schoutens. It features the section "Mervyn Morris: Critic of Literary Voice." We highlight artwork by Lisandro Suriel.
Check it out tinyurl.com/2s4kdx97
It includes essays by Aristides Dimitriou, Celenis Rodríguez, René Kooiker, Sophie Maríñez, and Wayne Modest and Esmee Schoutens. It features the section "Mervyn Morris: Critic of Literary Voice." We highlight artwork by Lisandro Suriel.
Check it out tinyurl.com/2s4kdx97
July 6, 2025 at 6:59 PM
sx 76 has shipped!
It includes essays by Aristides Dimitriou, Celenis Rodríguez, René Kooiker, Sophie Maríñez, and Wayne Modest and Esmee Schoutens. It features the section "Mervyn Morris: Critic of Literary Voice." We highlight artwork by Lisandro Suriel.
Check it out tinyurl.com/2s4kdx97
It includes essays by Aristides Dimitriou, Celenis Rodríguez, René Kooiker, Sophie Maríñez, and Wayne Modest and Esmee Schoutens. It features the section "Mervyn Morris: Critic of Literary Voice." We highlight artwork by Lisandro Suriel.
Check it out tinyurl.com/2s4kdx97