Skip to content
MIT Press
  • MIT Press
  • Books
    • Column
      • View all subjects
      • New releases
      • Catalogs
      • Textbooks
      • Series
      • Awards
    • Column
      • Authors
      • Distributed presses
      • The MIT Press Reader
      • Podcasts
      • Collections
    • Column
      • MIT Press Direct

        MIT Press Direct is a distinctive collection of influential MIT Press books curated for scholars and libraries worldwide.

        • Learn more
  • Journals
    • column
      • Journals all topics
      • Economics
      • International Affairs, History, & Political Science
    • column
      • Arts & Humanities
      • Science & Technology
      • Open access
    • column
      • MIT Press journals

        MIT Press began publishing journals in 1970 with the first volumes of Linguistic Inquiry and the Journal of Interdisciplinary History. Today we publish over 30 titles in the arts and humanities, social sciences, and science and technology.

        • Learn more
  • Open Access
    • column
      • Open access at the MIT Press
      • Open access books
      • Open access journals
    • column
      • Direct to Open
      • MIT Open Publishing Services
      • MIT Press Open on PubPub
    • Column
      • Open access

        The MIT Press has been a leader in open access book publishing for over two decades, beginning in 1995 with the publication of William Mitchell’s City of Bits, which appeared simultaneously in print and in a dynamic, open web edition.

        • Learn more
  • Info for
    • column
      • Current authors
      • Prospective authors
      • Instructors
    • column
      • Media inquiries
      • Booksellers
      • Rights and permissions
    • column
      • Resources

        Collaborating with authors, instructors, booksellers, librarians, and the media is at the heart of what we do as a scholarly publisher. If you can’t find the resource you need here, visit our contact page to get in touch.

        • Learn more
  • Give
  • About
    • Column
      • About
      • Jobs
      • Internships
      • MIT Press Editorial Board
      • MIT Press Management Board
      • Our MIT story
    • Column
      • Catalogs
      • News
      • Events
      • Conferences
      • Bookstore
    • Column
      • The MIT Press

        Established in 1962, the MIT Press is one of the largest and most distinguished university presses in the world and a leading publisher of books and journals at the intersection of science, technology, art, social science, and design.

        • Learn more
  • Contact Us
Newsletter
MIT Press
Newsletter

Books

    Authors

      On the site

        • Home
        • Sternberg Press / e-flux journal
        • art
        • social science
        • People of the Universe
        People of the Universe

        Sternberg Press / e-flux journal

        People of the Universe

        by Charles Mudede

        • $24.00 Paperback

        136 pp., 4 x 7 in,

        • Paperback
        • 9781915609052
        • Published: April 2, 2024
        • Publisher: Sternberg Press
        • Rights: not for sale in Europe or the UK

        $24.00

        • MIT Press Bookstore
        • Penguin Random House
        • Amazon
        • Barnes and Noble
        • Bookshop.org
        • Indiebound
        • Indigo
        • Books a Million

        Other Retailers:

        • MIT Press Bookstore
        • Penguin Random House
        • Amazon
        • Barnes and Noble
        • Bookshop.org
        • Indiebound
        • Indigo
        • Books a Million
        • Amazon.co.uk
        • Blackwells
        • Bookshop.org
        • Foyles
        • Hive
        • Waterstones
        • Request permissions
        • Description
        • Author(s)

        How have we evolved within the globalized market economy that has reigned triumphant in the decades since the 1999 Battle of Seattle?

        “Commentating, illustrating
        Description giving, adjective expert
        Analyzing, surmising, musical
        Myth-seeking people of the universe, this is yours!”
        —T La Rock, “It's Yours”

        What are people like now? How have we, in a cultural sense, evolved within the globalized market economy that has reigned triumphant in the decades since the 1999 Battle of Seattle?

        In People of the Universe, Charles Mudede begins with the distinction between the cultural and the social. The former emerges from the latter, which defines the kind of animal we are universally. Sociobiological universality is stretched to the cultural with political consequences whose temporality is not directly biotic (the social) but historical. The historical specificity of a collective experience is defined by the principles of a culture determined by the distributional logic of the market system. We do not experience abstract time, which is the time of always. We specifically experience market-time, which is not transhistorical.

        People of the Universe is infused with a futurism that is not without its problems. A number of its essays examine the limits not only of a futurism directed by an unthinking reverence of progress that has its origins in the Victorian cultural world, but, more specifically, Afrofuturism. Other essays scan the horizon with a third conceptual tool, this time taken from world-systems thinking, which, in essence, organizes the history of capitalist accumulation into four state forms.

        Copublished by e-flux journal

        Charles Tonderai Mudede is a Zimbabwean-born cultural critic, urbanist, filmmaker, college lecturer, and writer. He is the Senior Staff Writer of The Stranger and a lecturer at Cornish College of the Arts, and has collaborated with director Robinson Devor on three films, two of which, Police Beat (2005) and Zoo (2007), premiered at Sundance, and one of which, Zoo, screened at Cannes. Mudede's first film as director, Thin Skin, will be released by Mutiny Pictures in fall of 2022. He has also written for the New York Times, Cinema Scope, Tank Magazine, e-flux journal, LA Weekly, Nest Magazine, and C Theory.

        Related Books

        Ecstatic Worlds
        Kafka for Kids
        Keren Cytter Does Not Like to Share
        Purgatory
        Bad Infinity
        Feminist Worldmaking and the Moving Image
        Leslie Thornton
        Design in Motion
        Hollis Frampton
        Shona Illingworth
        logo
        • Column 1
          • Books
          • Journals
          • The MIT Press Reader
          • Podcasts
          • Imprints
        • Column 2
          • The MIT Press
            • About
            • Bookstore
            • Catalogs
            • Conferences
            • Press Editorial Board
            • Jobs
            • Internships
            • Press Management Board
            • News
            • Staff
            • Code of Conduct
            • Give
        • Column 3
          • Site Help
            • Accessibility
            • FAQ
            • Our eBooks
            • Privacy Policy
            • Terms of Use
        • Column 4
          • Resources
            • Current Authors
            • Prospective Authors
            • Booksellers
            • Instructors
            • Rights and Permissions
            • Media Inquiries
            • MIT Discounts
        • Column 5
          • Digital
            • CogNet
            • Digital Partners and Products
            • Knowledge Futures Group
            • MIT Press Direct
        • Global

          One Broadway 12th Floor Cambridge, MA 02142

        • Contact

        Connect

        © 2023 MIT Press. All Rights Reserved.

        Powered by Supadu