What a read! Sentences stretching on and on, a thick use of jargon interspersed with obscure references to historical sources, ceaseless interpretation upon interpretation of difficult texts: Marin does know how to challenge his readers. However, if one is willing to accept that one can simply not take everything in, at least not a first read, that this book has to offer, it is a tremendously original read that does enough to provoke thought.

The Portrait of the King is simultaneously a historical work about the reign of the Sun King in seventeenth century French, an semiotic analysis of his signs and 'langue', and a critique of power in relation to discourse. Marin argues that the King becomes King only through the constitution of his Portrait, that is, that the origin of absolute force lies in a particular mode of representation. The simulacrum is primary. This means too that the King has 'two bodies': that of man and that of king. The man becomes king only through his 'portrait', by which Marin means all representations that disseminate his authority, whereas the portrait only becomes authorized by referring back to the King.


The highlight of Marin's work is, in my opinion, his discussion of the fable of 'Donkey Skin', also known as the folk tale about the donkey whose excrement was pure gold. When reading this through Marin's eyes, the story is completely transformed, and hidden layers are brought to the fore. No detail escapes Marin's watchful eyes, and all lines of the poem are brought into play to elucidate why this remarkable fairy tale about a gold-pooping donkey is actually about the tyran's desire for himself.

When opening this book, one should be prepared for some dazzling games of post-modern analysis, where origins are continuously deferred, where minor details in the margins of texts gain hyperbolic attention. If clarity is your thing, do not even bother reading Marin. If, however, you want to understand the language of power, and the power of language, this is a marvelous book, because it raises questions that I feel receive less attention today. What kind of discourse do the powerful speak? How do they manifest their power in this discourse? What do readers and listeners do to actualize this power? These questions can be posed to the Elon Musks and the Joe Bidens of this world as much as they could to the Sun King.