Conseil international d’études francophones (CIEF)
July 1-8, 2007.
Christine Duff
The challenge, as is the case with any large conference, is choosing between concurrent sessions of interest. The first sessions took place in the afternoon on Sunday July 1st . Many attendees were still arriving on Monday July 2nd, depending on their point of origin, but this was the first full day of the conference. Session topics ranged from the literature of the Maghreb, Caribbean identities and Francophone poetry to the use of technology in cultural and literary studies. July 3rd saw Francophone literatures and politics, guianese history and culture, writing as safeguard of collective memory, francophone travel writing and writing for young people among the subjects addressed. Ananda Devi, prominent author from Mauritius, delivered a plenary address that evening and held a book-signing session. This was followed by a screening of the documentary Marrons sur la piste des créoles d’Amérique du Nord and a discussion with its Canadian filmmaker André Gladu. There were several sessions devoted entirely to guianese history, culture and literature from the récits du bagne to the writing of Bertène Juminer, René Maran, Léon Gontran Damas, Parépou, Serge Patient and Lyne-Marie Stanley. The Atlantic as a transnational space and the notion of the French Atlantic were also evoked and discussed. A roundtable discussion on the image of the creole woman in francophone literature found its highlight in Ernest Pépin’s plea for a non-mythical female figure in Caribbean literature. Another roundtable discussion, this one mid-event, entitled “Creolization: linguistic, literary and cultural explorations” gave rise to an animated and informative discussion on the genesis and evolution of the idea of creolization, especially within the guianese context.
On July 4th, there were no afternoon sessions to allow for excursions to the space centre at Kourou and the crique Gabriel, a river affectionately called a “creek” which forms part of the Amazonian river system. I chose to explore the crique Gabriel in a 16-ft pirogue, the main mode of transportation for the greater part of the country navigable only by water. It is here that I saw and understood the guianese abatti, first introduced to me by Lyne-Marie Stanley in her 1996 novel La saison des abattis. The abatti refers to a unique method of agriculture in Guiana: plots along the river are cleared each season by burning, leaving rich soil for planting. It is also along the crique Gabriel and the Mahury River it feeds into, that the wonders of the mangrove are obvious. The high, densely intertwined roots of the palétuvier trees that line the water’s edge are truly sculptural and it is immediately apparent that, as one of Maryse Condé’s characters in Traversée de la mangrove (Crossing the Mangrove) affirms, one does not cross a mangrove.
Midway along the trek it rained. Oh, how it rained. The downpour was fast and furious, descending on us in solid cords. Almost as suddenly as it had started, the rain stopped, leaving a sultry mist suspended over the river and in the dense greenery above us. The rain punctuated other discoveries: the rosewood tree, the tiny nest of a colibri (a brilliantly-coloured tropical hummingbird), giant bamboo and a tarantula in the leaves just above our heads. We came to the open area of a flooded savanna and this is where the fugitive slave Gabriel, the river’s namesake, drowned trying to escape from the military pursuing him.