This article argues that contending ideas about autonomy lie behind current discourses of human rights, claims to nation-state and cultural autonomy, and democracy promotion. Globalizing processes are bringing these contested understandings of autonomy, and their often silent framing within assumptions about sovereignty, into a new prominence. Locating itself within agonistic views of autonomy and politics, the article argues that it is necessary to pay closer attention to the perspectives that feminist and postcolonial analyses bring to understanding how autonomy, community, culture, and nation are co-constructed within imaginaries, such as liberal multiculturalism, that are no longer adequate to current demands for justice. To succeed, this renewed attention needs to locate itself within an effort to rethink academic community and the research protocols and collaborative practices this community permits and legitimizes. Este articulo sostiene que las ideas contendientes sobre la autonomia yacen detras d...