Nicholas Giguère

Nicholas Giguère, “De la revue Le Berdache (1979-82) au bulletin À propos (1986-87): grandeurs et misères de la presse gaie militante au Québec”. Papers of the Bibliographical Society of Canada / Cahiers de la Société bibliographique du Canada Issue 52, no 2, 2014.

Giguère reads Le Berdache, a periodical linked to the Association pour les droits des gai(e)s du Québec, and its successors as a parable for Québec gay history more generally. Giguère argues that in the rise and decline of Le Berdache we can track the historical trajectory from an activist gay press to a more commercially oriented press, from a militant gay politics to an emergent lifestyle politics shaped more by the market. Drawing on the ‘social uses of reading,’ Giguère conceptualizes gay periodicals as doing more than simply reflecting reality; rather, the gay press intervenes in and helps to shape the changing social and political milieu. While much work in Québec LGBT studies adopts the perspective of political history or anthropology, Giguère situates his research in the study of print culture, thus helping to queer the field of book history and print culture in Québec and Canada.