New Book in Translation by the Late Brazilian Activist and Quilombo Leader Nêgo Bispo, Co-translated by Prof. Brostoff

The department is pleased to announce the publication of the late Brazilian activist and quilombo leader Antônio Bispo dos Santos’ The Earth Gives, the Earth Wants (Polity Press, 2026), co-translated by Alex Brostoff and Jamille Pinheiro Dias. Grounded in quilombola thought, The Earth Gives, the Earth Wants reflects on ways of life sustained by reciprocity and coexistence: if we take from the earth, so too must we give back to it. Drawing on critical concepts developed over a lifetime, including “counter-colonialism,” “confluence” and “biointeraction,” Bispo challenges the extractive logics through which the earth is subordinated and estranged from us. The result is an intervention that challenges some of the basic assumptions about colonial modernity.

The Earth Gives, the Earth Wants is Brostoff’s and Pinheiro Dias’ third collaborative book in translation and the latest edition to the Critical South series, which publishes the work of major thinkers from the Global South whose interventions complicate North-South divisions, making timely interventions in contemporary debates about the future of critical thought. The series is part of the initiatives of the International Consortium of Critical Theory Programmes, funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.