How to Do Things with Signs: Rousseau’s Ancient Performative Idiom

In various writings Rousseau ascribes to the ancient Greeks, Romans, and Israelites a mostly visual, gestural, and non-semantic idiom of communication: the language of signs. The article examines the performative aspects of this imagined ancient language, while situating it within the context of other eighteenth-century projections of a vivid language of action onto classical antiquity. It is argued that Rousseau’s originality lies not only in his emphasis on the performative rather than merely passionate character of this idiom. He also weaved it into a typology of political regimes and performance arts, identifying it with a particular kind of republican politics and public festivals. More generally, the language of signs assisted Rousseau in explaining the establishment of national polities by legendary lawgivers, as well as in fathoming the transformation of human nature in the transition from a state of nature to civil society