This paper will consider the history and politics of autoethnography in relation to the activist scholarship of Mad Studies. As part of ethnographic research about ‘recovery in/from serious mental health problems’ in the UK, I accessed an NHS community “arts for mental health” service as a service-user would do, situating this data in broader socio-political debates concerning the meaning, management and lived experience of madness and distress. This paper examines the framing of this research as autoethnographic and the relationship of personal and/or lived experience to the knowledge produced. I explore the classificatory, confessional and Mad politics of experience, identity and identification, and embodiment for research subjectivities. Employing autoethnographic means, I consider the ways in which I situate myself, and am situated by others, in relation to my research; evaluating the methodological implications of the crisis of representation in anthropology, and the post-structuralist criticism of identity politics. Through an engagement Mad Studies, I seek to move beyond these two established responses to the use of personal experience and autobiography in research.