Mélancolie des signes - L’esthétique de la sensibilité de Jean-Jacques Rousseau entre expression et imitation

Through an analysis of Rousseau’s Essai sur l’origine des langues’s quotation of the myth of Dibutade’s daughter, this article shows the limits of Jacques Derrida’s reading of it as no more than an expressive gesture : the example is about expressing a sensitivity to signs. It tells us about producing a trace, and a sort of writing, in opposition with Derrida’s idea of Rousseau being a prisoner of the metaphysical illusion of an immediate expression for which language would be nothing but a pale substitute.