Newly elected French president, Emmanuel Macron, conceives of his role as that of a master purveyor of narratives and signs. His recently unveiled official portrait is just the latest in a series of symbolic stagings, which started the very night he was elected.
Macron dramatised his accession to power by slowly processing across the Louvre Square to the accompaniment of Beethoven’s Ode to Joy. The ceremony offered a profusion of symbols to be deciphered. The same piece of music was also performed when former socialist president François Mitterrand was enthroned in a ceremony at the

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