As I was preparing this paper, I kept thinking that the topic 1 was treating was not The Place of the Personal but The Uses of the Personal. This tenacious false memory is symptomatic, of course; it means that I do not question the place of the personal in scholarship: as far as 1 am concerned, it has always been there, whether stated, overstated (as some think it is), or (as it has generally been) understated, concealed behind the “impersonal” doxa of the day. I do not, then, question the place of the personal (except to suggest that it has more than one place) but instead consider its uses and its function in scholarship, its diverse uses and its diverse functions in different cultural and scholarly traditions that intersect in my practice as a scholar in this country. Indeed, as I tackled this paper, those intersecting traditions made my thinking about the place of the personal in my work immensely difficult. I kept asking myself not only where and when and how I resort to the personal but also, and pressingly, for whom I am personal when I am personal.