| Acknowledgments | |
| List of Illustrations | |
| List of Abbreviations | |
| Introduction | 3 |
| Sign Wars | |
| The Art of Signing | |
| 1 | Ancient Gestures, Modern Signs | 13 |
| French Ancients and Moderns | |
| The Deaf in the Harem | |
| The Deafness of the Ancients | |
| Philosophy and the Sign | |
| Sign at the Salon | |
| Signs of Revolution | |
| 2 | Signs and Citizens | 48 |
| Regeneration and the Deaf | |
| The Politics of Deafness | |
| The Normal and the Pathological | |
| David's Studio and the Deaf | |
| 3 | The Mimicry of Mimesis | 90 |
| Morality, Sign, and Pathology | |
| Mimicry, Copying, and Originality | |
| Revolt and Organization | |
| Cultural Politics | |
| A Culture of Gestures | |
| Mimicry and Mimesis | |
| 4 | Visualizing Anthropology | 139 |
| Touch, the Hand, and Gesture | |
| Evolutionism, Art, and the Sign | |
| The Silent Monument | |
| Milan and After | |
| 5 | A Deaf Variety of Modernism? | 194 |
| Republican Morality | |
| The Deaf Artists and the Museum | |
| Gesture and Hysteria | |
| Deaf Republicans | |
| Deaf Artists and the Third Republic | |
| The Deaf and the Dreyfus Affair | |
| Eugenics and the Deaf | |
| Deaf Moderns | |
| Epilogue | 255 |
| Anthropology and Philosophy | |
| Art History | |
| Deaf Culture | |
| Notes | 265 |
| Index | 311 |
