Pet Shop Boys and the Political

Bodie A. Ashton is a Postdoctoral Researcher at Universität Erfurt, Germany. He is a historian of identity, particularly in queer history, and is the co-editor of Taking Bodies Vol II (2020).

• List of FiguresIntroduction, Bodie A. Ashton, (Universität Erfurt, Germany)Part I It’s All About Change, It’s a Metamorphosis: The Personal-Political 1. Che Guevara and Debussy to a Disco Beat: Intellectualism and the Pet Shop Boys, Antares Russell Leask, (North Virginia Community College, USA)2. The End of the West: Community and Chorus in Pet Shop Boys since ‘Go West’, Adrian Daub, (Stanford University, USA)3. He Dreamed of Machines: Queer Heritage and the Pet Shop Boys’ Turing Test, Bodie A. Ashton, (Universität Erfurt, Germany)Part II Blaming the Colour TV: Neoliberal and Capitalist Critique4. Buying and Selling Your History: Navigating the Ruins of Neoliberalism with Tennant and Lowe, Jonathan Dean, (University of Leeds, UK)5. The Currency We Spent: The Pet Shop Boys and the Actualisation of Thatcherite Economics, Stephanie Polsky, (Goldsmiths University of London, UK)6. Moscow or Manderley? Spectrality and Sovietism in the Pet Shop Boys’ Oeuvre, Carolin Isabel Steiner (University of Applied Sciences Mittweida, Germany)Part III We Came from Outer Space: Siting and Spatiality7. “All that Swinging Sixties. It Never Did Anyone Any Good, Did It?” The Pet Shop Boys and the Scandal of the Profumo Affair, Christopher Spinks (University of East Anglia, UK)8. Go West, Young Band, Torsten Kathke (Johannes-Guttenberg-Universität Mainz, Germany)Part IV We’re the Pet Shop Boys: Metanarrativity and Manifestations9. It’s a Sin: Religious Imagery and Queer Identities in It Couldn’t Happen Here, Lisa-Marie Pöhland (Technische Universität Chemnitz, Germany)10. What Have I Done to Deserve This? Personal, Professional, and Political Representations in Smash Hits during the ‘Imperial Phase’ (1986-1988), Lexi Webster (Manchester Metropolitan University, UK)11. You’ve Been Around but You Don’t Look Too Rough: The Pet Shop Boys as Legacy Artists, Abby S. Waysdorf (Universiteit Utrecht, The Netherlands)12. It's (Not) Obvious: Queerness and Queer Identities Pre- and Post-Bilingual, Bodie A. Ashton (Universität Erfurt, Germany) and Carolin Isabel Steiner (University of Applied Sciences Mittweida, Germany)

This delightful collection brings together an interdisciplinary group of scholars. As the authors dive into themes like Thatcherism and queerness, they showcase both the critical role the Pet Shop Boys played in shaping the social and cultural landscape as well as the meaning(s) its music has brought to listeners.