Emmanuel Macron wants to redefine French culture

A PHILOSOPHY graduate and unpublished novelist, Emmanuel Macron treats French culture like a national treasure, and the French language as a jewel. “French is the language of reason, it’s the language of light,” the president declared when inaugurating the Louvre in Abu Dhabi, a silver-domed gallery on a sandy shore that he called a museum “of the desert and light”. Mr Macron has vowed to make French the first language in Africa, and “perhaps” the world; he named a young bestselling Franco-Moroccan novelist, Leïla Slimani, to lead this mission. Yet his campaign to rejuvenate French, and to open the country up to writers who share the language around the world, has inadvertently revived a French culture war.