The incestuous sins of the soixante-huitards
Henri Astier reveals the secrets and lies of the Castro-loving revolutionaries who became part of the French élite
Camille Kouchner was in her early teens when her twin brother told her that their stepfather, the French political analyst, Olivier Duhamel, had come into his bedroom and seduced him. “Do you think it’s wrong?” the boy asked. More than 30 years on, Kouchner is hazy about the exact timing of the exchange, but she remembers her reply clearly: “Because it’s him, it has to be OK. He’s teaching us, that’s all. We’re not buttoned up.”
Bottling things up, however, is just what Kouchner and others did. La Familia Grande, her memoir of abuse and secrecy at the heart of France’s intelligentsia, is about the resulting damage. The alleged attacks lasted two or three years. The twins were sworn to silence, but Kouchner found it increasingly difficult to live with a pact she felt provided cover for a paedophile. When they mustered the courage to open up to their mother, two decades after the event, she stood by her man. It took another dozen years for Kouchner, now 45, to bear witness publicly.
The publication of La Familia Grande in January had an explosive effect. Duhamel’s prominence cannot be overstated. A renowned constitutional law expert, he was ubiquitous on radio and TV; the august bodies he headed included the
Fondation Nationale des Sciences Politiques and Le Siècle, an exclusive for club for politicians, businessmen and journalists; he was regarded as a potential member of the Conseil constitutionnel, which acts as France’s Supreme Court.
When the scandal broke Duhamel resigned from all his positions, tweeting that he was “the target of personal attacks” and needed “to protect institutions for which I work”. The taint spread anyway. Media reports confirmed Kouchner’s charge that many of Duhamel’s influential friends had known about the allegations and looked the other way. Those forced to quit included the director of Sciences Po, a prestigious university attended by the five most recent French presidents.
Although it is not the first testimony of its kind in France, La Familia Grande is credited with lifting the lid on a taboo subject. It set off a social media campaign, with tens of thousands of users sharing their experience under the hashtag #Metooincest. One reason for this impact is the book’s wider cast of characters. The author is the daughter of Bernard Kouchner, a humanitarian grandee, Socialist heavyweight and former foreign minister; his current wife is a celebrity journalist; Camille’s aunt is the late actress-filmmaker MarieFrance Pisier, to whom La Familia Grande is dedicated. All three are blameless, but the tale has the appeal of an exposé of rottenness among the rich and famous.
Its publication was also timely. Parliament had been discussing a bill to change French law on consent. To convict someone of rape — even of a child — prosecutors until then had to prove violence or coercion. A “consensual” relationship with a minor was a lesser offence with a shorter statute of limitation. Following the release of La Familia Grande, legislation creating a crime of statutory rape for all victims aged under 15 was rushed through parliament.
Crucially, the book chimes with the anti-elite spirit of the times. Reviewers have described it as an indictment of the caste of insiders that runs France and have each other’s backs. Such comments are correct, but they miss a key aspect of Kouchner’s story: Duhamel and his circle belong to a subset of the French elite that has remained wedded, at least in words, to the revolutionary ethos of the 1960s. Génération, a celebrated two-volume portrait of upwardly-mobile rebels by Hervé Hamon and Patrick Rotman, describes how they made their place in entertainment, journalism, business and government.
The election of François Mitterrand in 1981 was a milestone. The Socialist leader had promised “rupture with capitalism” and his accession to France’s all-powerful presidency was a welcome development for clever Young Turks who yearned for institutional influence while holding on to the old radical rhetoric. Nineteenth-century tropes that no longer cut ice with ordinary voters were perpetuated in France’s corridors of power well into the new millennium. When the Socialist employment minister was replaced in 2000, her staff saw her off by singing the Communist anthem The Internationale.
Camille Kouchner was raised by such establishment revolutionaries. In 1964 her mother, Évelyne Pisier, travelled to Cuba during a summer break from law studies. Kouchner gives
few details about the trip, but accounts by Pisier and others provide an interesting perspective on later events. The visit had been organised by a group of communist students led by a young Bernard Kouchner.
Soon after their arrival, Fidel Castro dropped by their hostel in Santiago and was smitten by the 23-year-old Pisier. That night he took her and a few of her friends on a tour of the Sierra Maestra, the cradle of the Cuban Revolution, on board shiny black Buicks; at dawn the students were returned to their hostel, except Pisier who followed Castro to his residence.
The two would spend most nights together for the remainder of the group’s Cuban venture. Una Liutkus, a lifelong friend of Pisier who was among the youthful pilgrims, recalls that a chauffeur would pick her up from their Havana hotel after dinner and drive her to wherever El Comandante was staying.
He constantly moved temporary homes as he feared assassination and always had a gun with him. Pisier found the sound of Castro’s holster belt dropping to the floor when he took it off incredibly sexy, she told Liutkus at the time.
The communist students were put up in a five-star hotel. Such special treatment didn’t go down well with the purists among them, who insisted on sharing the experience of peasants on sugarcane fields. Half the French contingent declined an invitation by Fidel to go lobster fishing on board a yacht seized from drug traffickers. Pisier was not among the naysayers. It is reasonable to suspect that her privileged access may have reconciled her to the idea that absolute rule and its perks are justified as long as those who enjoy them are on the side of justice.
The affair with the Líder Máximo was no mere holiday romance. Castro flew Pisier and her mother back to Cuba a year later. The long-distance relationship continued for four years — before she settled on Bernard Kouchner, whom she married in 1970.
Evidently gifted, Pisier became the first woman to teach public law at a French university and went on to become a top culture ministry official. She remained devoted to the Cuban revolution throughout. She taught her Sorbonne students about “the specificity of guevarism” and told her children