Coming Full Circle and Spiralling: Fissures Through Essentialism, English, and Empire.

In this performative autoethnography, I broadly question the communication discipline's investments in empire. Specifically, by tracing how my body – as a Pinay – has not fit within the united states, academia, and the field, I map the fissures created by my body's contact with essentialism, english, and empire. Through stories offered, I call for a more liberatory knowledge production – one that goes beyond identity politics and toward abolition, one that encourages the pluriversality of knowledges and languages beyond the white and Eurocentric canon, and one that lays siege to the empire and moves toward liberation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]