Dethroning Sovereign Logology: From Gorgias to Globish

This article opens by considering a famous line from Gorgias that Cassin repeatedly returns to, namely, a line where Gorgias calls logos a great dunastês. It in particular examines Cassin’s translation of dunastês as ‘sovereign’ and demonstrates how describing the logos as a sovereign is connected to Cassin’s view of the ‘almightiness of speech’. Next, it examines Cassin’s critique of Derrida when it comes to power, above all, that he is an apologist for impotence. It argues that Cassin misunderstands Derrida, and fails to acknowledge how Derrida’s notion of the unconditional is without power but not without force. It then examines why Cassin’s sovereign logology is opposed to Globish. Her remarks about Globish are analysed and shown to be problematic on both an empirical and conceptual level, by putting her notion of Globish into conversation with the work of various sociolinguists, as well as Heidegger and Derrida.