Discovering culture and politics:
Dispatches from Paris
Dispatch 3
June 18, 2007
I'm yawning as I stumble out the door at 8:30 am, pulling on a jacket and checking to make sure I have my umbrella. Paris is a big city and research is a solitary activity, so to get oriented and meet some people, I have signed up for a one-week general French course at the Alliance Française. The Alliance is a world-wide organization that offers classes in French language, culture, and history, as well as seminars with visiting authors and other special events, such as films and wine tasting. I get to class just as it's starting, and the teacher welcomes me and introduces herself as Antoinette. There are about fifteen other students of varying ages, and as we start conversing about the judicial systems in our countries, I learn that we are almost all from different places. There's a guy and a girl from England, college-aged, three Italian women, a girl from Brazil, one from Turkey, another American, and a woman from Singapore. As I chat with Camilla form Brazil and Sylvia from Singapore, it strikes me as kind of cool that we can't fall back on English at all, because French is the only language we have in common!
The Pompidou Center.Credit Sarah Weaver
For the rest of the morning, Antoinette ruthlessly corrects our pronunciation (she threatens to throw us par la fenêtre if we make a mistake!) and puts us through exercises in pronouns, verb tenses, and figurative expressions. By the time class is over, I'm starving and could really use a nap. However, I still have lots to do today, so I grab a panini from a boulangerie and find the nearest metro stop, this time to go to the Pompidou Center Library.
The Pompidou Center is located in Les Halles, a magical, labyrinthine neighborhood on the Right Bank with narrow, winding streets that open up into quaint squares and courtyards when you least expect it. In such a picturesque setting, the Pompidou Center looks like it landed on the wrong planet. A gargantuan modern rectangle, all its pipes and plumbing are exposed on the outside and painted bright green, blue, red, or yellow. The museum of modern art takes up most of the building, but part of the first and second floors is reserved for the Bibliothéque Publique d'Information. I get off the metro right at the foot of the building and follow signs to the library entrance, marked by a huge green neon sign. I weave my way through what feels like miles of dividers, intended to organize the lines when thousands of high school and college students come here to study for their exams. Fortunately, there's no line today, and I easily pass through security, up an escalator, and into the library.
Luckily for me, the Pompidou Center is much less formal than the National Library. There's no access fee and I don't need a card to get in, although visitors are still not permitted to check books out. I find an open computer station and click my way into the library's periodical database. I type "francophonie" into the subject search, hit enter, and am immediately inundated with over 600 direct matches! I guess I have my work cut out for me. Briefly, I speak to a librarian about printing articles. He pushes his glasses up the bridge of his nose and instructs me on how to buy a copy card.
A view of the square outside the Pompidou Center.Credit Sarah Weaver
Back at the computer, I fall into a rhythm, reading article titles, scanning for relevance, searching for dates that match those of the Francophonie summits. At these meetings, held every few years since 1986 in a different member country, all the important heads-of-state got together to discuss the state of the French-speaking world and what they could do about it. As I search through the database, I discover that the press really didn't have much to say about Francophonie until 1997, when the new Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali formally announced that the OIF would now be a politically-oriented organization.
Six hours and 10 Euros worth of photocopies later, I find my way out of the library and blink in the sunlight, enjoying a great sense of accomplishment. I am finding what I'm looking for! I can't wait to go back to the library tomorrow to continue my discoveries.