Abstract
This essay bridges the standard divide between traditional realist and critical IR theory by demonstrating their unity in the international thought of E. H. Carr. In recent times, numerous scholars have challenged Carr's mainstream disciplinary image as a traditional realist, seeking to dissociate him from realism and narrate him as a proto-critical theorist instead. However, this has implicitly reinforced the divide between the two perspectives and obscured their fusion in Carr's thought. In contrast, this essay does not deny Carr's realism, but rather reveals how it expressed a distinctly critical theoretical consciousness. Focusing primarily on his attacks on liberal statecraft and liberal historiography in, respectively, The Twenty Years' Crisis and What Is History? it demonstrates that his analyses manifested key critical theory elements, including anti-positivist epistemology, counter-hegemonic tendencies, western Marxist ideology critique and sociology of knowledge, and a commitment to progressive human emancipation from self-imposed constraints.