Shakespeare and the Performative Sign: Towards an Ethics of Representation

Shakespeare was the major conduit through which Aristotelian economics were transmitted to the study of modern capitalism. His economic views are predicated on a moral critique of the performative power of signs, and his plays challenge the assumptions that appearance is identical with reality and that there is no essence that can be distinguished from experience. This makes his work especially pertinent to today’s economy, in which the performative signs called “financial derivatives” have become the main repositories of value.