Jacques Derrida and Richard Rorty are two of the most famous living philosophers. Deconstruction and pragmatism are the two major intellectual traditions whose current influence would be unthinkable without their work. This ground-breaking book brings these two thinkers together in a critical confrontation between these two traditions. Derridean deconstruction and Rortian pragmatism are both accused by their enemies of undermining our ideas of truth and reason, but do their ideas lead to intellectual and political chaos? Both seek to clarify what is at stake intellectually and politically while two other distinguished theorists, Simon Critchley and Ernesto Laclau, provide a critical context for their debate and bring out the importance of the convergences and differences between the two.