Introduction: The Present State of Affairs

Abstract

Popular interest in the issue of adultery during the 1990s has revolved around the extra-marital transgressions of male politicians in various western countries. These include Conservative scandals in the United Kingdom and the alleged profligacy of Bill Clinton and of François Mitterrand. Nowhere has the powerful mythology of the adulterous child been orchestrated more skilfully than in Mitterrand’s arrangements for his own funeral attended by wife, mistress and illegitimate daughter. In the photographs, which were flashed around the world, of these three standing behind the president’s coffin we see the classic family portrait reconstructed by the absent father. Mitterrand’s immaculate conception of his own mortal end was thus presented as a final moment of candour from the master of self-deification, a moment when that particularly French division of the public realm of politics and the private domain of sexuality could be breached honourably.