This chapter critiques the external, detached perspective dominant in social science mental health research. Instead, it advocates for a methodology that begins with the embodied, “lived experience” of individuals struggling with unintelligible aspects of their own lives. It argues that scholarly inquiry originating from this personal “agonism” can generate powerful new discourses to make sense of one’s self and social world, ultimately challenging and talking back to inadequate dominant frameworks. The argument is exemplified through the intellectual journeys of Michel Foucault and Dorothy E. Smith, who each constructed new scholarly selves to explain their lived realities.