Conseil international d’études francophones (CIEF)
(International Congress of Francophone Studies)
Université des Antilles et de la Guyane Cayenne, French Guiana, July 1-8, 2007.
Christine Duff
Each year, the Conseil international d’études francophones (CIEF) holds a conference in a different part of the French-speaking world. This allows for important discoveries, especially for those of us who specialize in Francophone literatures outside of France and Québec. This year, the conference was held at the beginning of July in Cayenne, French Guiana.
Getting from Ottawa to Cayenne on the northeastern tip of the South American continent is no simple matter: the stops are many and the waits, both inside and outside of airports, are long. But I say this in the context of 21st century travel when we can move across space and time at a head-spinning pace. In fact, the myriad stops, layovers and delays involved in Canada-Guiana travel allow, at least in part, for the brain to catch up to the body. The body is duly inoculated against yellow fever, a requirement for entering Guiana, and is armed with anti-malaria drugs. Meanwhile, the brain has done some reading about this often neglected part of the francophone world and is familiar with some of its literary landscape. It is also quite focused on getting an academic paper ready to present, the raison d’être of the journey.
The first task facing the traveler is not to confuse Guiana with Guyana. Guiana is the French DOM (Département d’outre-mer) while Guyana is the former British colony to the west. The two are separated by Suriname, a former Dutch colony notorious for the cruelty of its slave regime. Guiana, whose neighbour to the east and south is Brazil, is probably best known as the home of Devil’s Island, part of the Iles du Salut penal colony operated by the French up until the early 1950s. The infamous Dreyfus Affair in France saw the army captain Alfred Dreyfus wrongfully convicted of treason in 1895 and sent to the penal colony just off the coast of Guiana. This scandal, along with Papillon, Henri Charrière’s somewhat fictional account of his own escape from Devil’s Island, have meant that Guiana is most often associated with its past as “l’enfer vert” (“green hell”). The weight of this association is somewhat offset by the decision of the French government in 1965 to situate its space program in Kourou, just west of the capital city Cayenne, due to its proximity to the Equator. The collective psyche is nonetheless marked by Guiana’s past as a penal colony. In recent years, however, Guiana has become known as the home of Christiane Taubira, Deputy in the French National Assembly and namesake of the Taubira Act (loi Taubira) passed in May 2001, recognizing slavery and the slave trade as crimes against humanity. In fact, it was Mme Taubira who delivered the plenary speech at the opening of the CIEF conference on July 2nd.