The book addresses such issues as the work of Derrida and deconstruction, discourse theory, Eurocentrism and poststructuralism.

1. Introduction: Realism, Discourse and Deconstruction Part 1: Realism and Critical Discourse Analysis 2. Critical Realism and Semiosis 3. Critical Realism, Critical Discourse Analysis, Concrete Research 4. How Might the Inclusion of Discursive Approaches Enrich Critical Realist Analysis?: The Case of Environmentalism Part 2: Voloshinov and Bakhtin 5. Will the Materialists in the Bakhtin Circle Please Stand Up? 6. Value and Contract Formation Part 3: Realism and Post-Marxism 7. Lost in Transit: Reconceptualising the Real 8. Laclau and Mouffe and the Discursive Turn: Gains and the Losses Part 4: Realism and Eurocentric Discourse 9. Eurocentrism, Realism and the Anthropic Carthography of Emancipation 10. The Dialectics of Realist Theory and the Eurocentric Problem of Modern Discourse 11. Limited Incorporation or Sleeping with the Enemy: Reading Derrida as a Critical Realist 12. Dialectics, Deconstruction and the Legal Subject 13. Learning to Live (with Derrida) 14. Deconstructing Anti-Realism: Derrida's 'White Mythology