- The book La Familia grande , published this Thursday by Editions du Seuil.
- Its author, Camille Kouchner , accuses his stepfather, Olivier Duhamel, of having raped his twin brother.
Again, a few months after revelations of Vanessa Springora and the Matzneff affair , a book written by a woman comes to shake the intellectual environment by breaking the silence on incest. This book, La Familia grande (Threshold), it is that of the lecturer in private law Camille Kouchner, who accuses her father-in-law Olivier Duhamel, constitutional expert , columnist on LCI and Europe 1 and president of the National Foundation for Political Science (FNSP). He has since resigned from all his functions .
This book is not only a judicial document, whereas the Paris prosecutor’s office has just opened an investigation for “rape of a minor of 14 years “. It is also a powerful testimony to the mechanisms of incest, as well as to the fabrication of silence and guilt. 15 Minutes summarizes five important ideas, images, or memories from the book.
- The serpent which becomes hydra
This is the most powerful image in the book: the serpent of guilt, which gradually turns into hydra. “Guilt is like a snake. You expect it to deploy in response to certain stimuli, but you don’t always know when it will paralyze you. It makes its way, traces its ways. “Camille Kouchner tells how she first reacted to the revelations of her twin brother – called here” Victor “- by minimizing the seriousness of what was entrusted to her:” He teaches us, that’s all. We are not stuck! »She is a child, of years perhaps, she says, who evolves in an atmosphere of sexual license, where we talk about “fucking” in front of the little ones, where the adored stepfather sometimes walks around naked, where the mother claims his conquests . She will therefore remain silent. As much to protect, she thinks, her brother, who asked her – on the injunction of her stepfather – as her stepfather himself, whom she adores.
Over the years, this lie, bought by tenderness and dug into a silence, gnaws at his body. Until becoming a “hydra”: “Until my 15 years, the hydra was only a snake. The reptile fed my amazement. I was nowhere. The absence in the presence. Nothing interested me anymore. I couldn’t make any choice (…) Then the hydra invited itself, she insisted, presented new features. Sadness joined with primary amazement. Anger was added to it. Sadness for my mother, anger at me. Immense guilt of existing. “
- Speaking against the will of the victims? A dilemma
“For letting me write this book when he only wants calm, I thank Victor”, writes Camille Kouchner at the end of his book , to thank you. This dilemma – “should I talk about the violence my brother suffered when he asked me to shut up?” »- is present throughout the book, which has been reread by his brother. Camille repeatedly urges her brother to speak. But the latter, at each stage, retracts, refuses to do so, regrets the pieces of speech conceded: “It’s not complicated all the same: I don’t want to talk about it. It’s the way I found to build my life. I put my energy into something else. Why do you absolutely want to stir up the past? “
- The silence of the courtiers and courtesans 20210105
To the silence of the brother, who suffers from being misunderstood, answers the one , of a completely different nature, of the “microcosm of people of power, Saint-Germain des Prés”. These, she says, “knew and most acted as if nothing had happened.” Why ? Out of interest, she explains. To mark “their belonging to a world”. To attract the king’s benevolence: “To be in the know is for the weakest among them a renewed means of showing their submission to my father-in-law, the most effective tool for pledging allegiance to the sovereign, swearing loyalty to him. . “
- A chronicle of the “left caviar” 20210105
In the background of this trap which is gradually closing on the “familia grande”, Camille Kouchner tells the story of a certain left, initially revolutionary, which will become gentrified, while maintaining the myth of its glorious revolutionary past, to amaze the gallery. Photos of his mother flirting with Fidel Castro are exhibited by his stepfather at the time of his death. His story here is acerbic, scathing at times, as much for his father as his stepfather, who both gravitate in the arcana of power:
“Des
, the revolutionary left gives way to the left caviar. Power pays off. There is no longer any question of a public school for children. Luz, Pablo and all the “cousins” are enrolled in the private sector, at the Alsatian School, which I have been taught to hate. (…) In Sanary, Rocard, Cresson, Bérégovoy, later Jospin will find more fans than Castro and Allendei. Power fans, often born pushers. My stepfather intends to anchor all these people in his obsession with identity. La Familia grande is an AOC ”.
- A not always flattering portrait of Bernard Kouchner 20210105
One of the representatives of this left caviar is the former minister Bernard Kouchner, the increasingly absent father. And not always tolerant. When his wife, Evelyne Pisier, leaves him, he becomes a couple again, but his children no longer want to go see this “Bernard” who is suffocating them. His new companion, who is known to be Christine Ockrent, even if she is not named, is also presented in an unflattering light, never happy with the noise or the silence of the children. Camille Kouchner describes the anguish of going home, the humiliations, the “chilling” gaze of their father who watches their every move.
But further on in the book, she rehabilitates him, claiming to have been able to disentangle “anger and admiration”: “Because after all, I believe in the honesty of his past fights. Seeking efficiency whatever the cost, imposing to be at the right time in the right place, including in the spotlight, is a necessity. Too easy to sit idly by to judge. To prefer to remain silent is to flee, to lack courage. Without a network, without a camera, without a speech, we can’t save anyone! »
It is also for all these nuances, this complex reality, which does not paint a picture of perfect victims and monstrous culprits, that Camille Kouchner’s book is to be read .