MUAE 3: Contagion Edited by Lawrence Chua Coming this winter! MUAE series . Premier volume . Collapsing New Buildings . Contagion . Events . Buy Books Now As the Third World begins to build digital economies, the contagious speed of daily life is transforming our understanding of the borders of nations, cities, and even our bodies. Immigrant workers, cyborgs, criminals, and agents of radical change are described as viruses, increasingly in the wrong place at the wrong time. New ethnicities, sexualities, and identities are mutating and thriving. What are the meanings of nativism and nationalism in a virtual world? What are the implications of disease in a world defined by viruses, where everything is, if not curable, then containable by multinational medical industries? "Contagion" can be a way of describing the moment of contact with civilization, the moment of invasion, the impossibility of purity, the reality of mestizaje, and the interdependence of all things. Through critical essays, fiction, poetry, and art, Contagion also looks at what is often left out of discussions of technology: the mostly female Third World labor pool that manufactures it. Writers and artists explore the era of the recombinant, in which appropriation has once again become an acceptable, even crucial element of literature and art.