Report of the visit-debate organized on 19 December 2011, in the framework of the Estates General of Multilingualism in the French Overseas Territories, by the GIS Institutions patrimoniales et pratiques interculturelles.

This visit-debate included several times: a meeting with the departmental library Alexandre Franconie, a visit of the museum of Guyanese cultures, followed by the Alexandre Franconie Museum and finally, a visit to Fort Cayenne.

The presentations and discussions that took place reflect the strength with which the cultures and languages of Guyana invest library and museums. But they also bear witness to the difficulties these cultures face.

  • What interculturality can develop if there is "an incompatibility of nature" between the informal character of culture and the formal character of the institutions that wish to enhance it?
  • Can new technologies, especially in a situation of cultural complexity, bring out the different dimensions of a culture and play a leading role in the practice of plurilingualism?

There is also the importance of exchanges that reflect the movements of populations and question administrative and political boundaries. Through a thorough and diverse work with associations on everyday objects, practices and words that express them, the will to promote the construction of knowledge by the inhabitants themselves becomes matter and way to make shared heritage.

The visit to the fort of Cayenne offers a historical perspective on these unthinkable and erasures that, from the Amerindian origins of toponyms to the wars of conquest, raise the question of conservation and its specificities in French-speakingsea: what is heritage and for whom?