Unfinished Business
Michael Jackson, Detroit, and the Figural Economy of American Deindustrialization
Judith Hamera
Reviews and Awards
Joint Winner of the 2020 Oscar G. Brockett Book Prize for Dance Research
Winner of the Sally Banes Publication Prize from the American Society for Theatre Research
"Unfinished Business: Michael Jackson, Detroit, and the Figural Economy of American Deindustrialization, is an absorbing and multi-faceted work..." -- Laura Robinson, Dance Research Journal
"This book is an essential read for scholars, economists, and performance makers. Its ability to contextualize economic patterns through the lens of performance studies underscores the significance of intersectional studies. In doing so, it reminds readers of the complex economic systems at play and the unfinished business that has yet to be done when "enough" is just an illusion." -- Leilia Mire, Thinking Dance
"A profoundly necessary and absorbing book." -- Text and Performance Quarterly
"Indeed, Unfinished Business is an urgent read for scholars already steeped in literature concerning performance and political economy, as well as for those who might be newly alerted to the work that remains to be done." -- Patrick McKelvey, The Journal of American Drama and Theatre
"Unfinished Business is a compelling, rigorously interdisciplinary work of scholarship: Hamera deftly fuses economic theory, cultural criticism, and performance analysis to offer a trenchant expose' of the workings of deindustrialization. Rooted in the specifics of Detroit but deeply revealing of the broader structures of racialized global capital, this book makes a compelling case for the centrality of performance cultures-and performance scholars-in making sense of the precarious times in which we live."- Brandi Wilkins Catanese, author of The Problem of the Color[blind]: Racial Transgression and the Politics of Black Performance
"This captivating study shows how structural economic changes must be seen not only through economic theory but also through their lived entanglements with racialized labor; labor as art and vice versa; the crisis and the potential behind bodies that aspire to be property; the extravagance and the exhaustion that choreograph both our economic practices and aesthetic consumptions. This ambitious project can only be realized in the hands of one of the most interdisciplinary and inventive scholars of our time."-Anne Anlin Cheng, author of Second Skin: Josephine Baker and the Modern Surface
"Through analysis of endlessly circulating figures of Michael Jackson and Detroit, Hamera offers a startling, de-familiarizing new view of how the current economic moment looks and feels. Boldly combining American studies and economics with studies of movement, dance, theatre, art, and performance, this book is as intellectually exhilarating as it is politically scathing."-Robin Bernstein, author of Racial Innocence: Performing American Childhood from Slavery to Civil Rights
"This book is an insightful analysis of deindustrialization with a Detroit perspective ... Recommended. Graduate students through faculty." --Choice
