Small Trees Take Down Big Axes

As part of a discussion of the author’s Une écologie décoloniale: Penser l’écologie depuis le monde caribéen (2019), translated by Anthony Paul Smith as Decolonial Ecology: Thinking from the Caribbean World (2022), this essay is in response to the essays by Alex A. Moulton and Sophie Large. First, the author more precisely articulates ecology with decolonial emancipation demands, including the need for a reinvention of our relationships with other-than-human animals. Second, he argues for the need to decenter Whiteness and coloniality in the appraisal of conceptual works that do not follow the focus of canonical European theory or the South American roots of decolonial theory. In conclusion, “small trees breaking down big axe” echoes the core proposition of Decolonial Ecology—that is, a political theory and aesthetics that holds together the need for the ecological preservation of Earth and the imperative of decolonial emancipation in the wake of euromodern colonization and slavery.