Preface: Paths Are Made By Walking

In many respects this is our motto, our cri de guerre, you might say, our standard. From its formal inception as a journal project in March 1997, Small Axe has always been— and self-consciously so—a work-in-progress, an ongoing platform for critical engagement that is never not in the process of finding its feet in the very act of planting them on the uncertain ground, without a pre-ordained or ready-made map of the right path to follow. To be sure there are those who went before us, whom we honor, and from whom we have taken (and continue, in some measure, to take) our bearings: they are the pioneers, one might call them, who labored in the quarry of journal work. In this regard, we have always acknowledged the fundamental examples of New World Quarterly and Savacou, differently historically situated and theoretically accented projects to be sure, but both exemplary in their profound commitments to elaborating the idea of a Caribbean journal of criticism. And there are, of course, deeper narrative traditions that connect us to Bim and Kyk-over-al and Focus, and to the many other “little magazines” and literary-political periodicals that are part of our anticolonial and postcolonial histories. We take our bearings from them, as I say, but we find our own way in our own—differently configured—worlds and—differently resonant—vocabularies. With this issue, Small Axe 27, October 2008, we begin to rough out a new journey of inquiry and connection. Each year for the next several years, the October issue of Small