Is everything personal also private? The modern world is neatly compartmentalized into the private and the public, and the personal is often used interchangeably with the private as if they are the same. But are they? The book starts a new discourse by distinguishing the two and analyzing existing discourses of history, culture, politics, ethics, and law, asserts that the underlying theory is vastly different, often antagonistic. It radically changes the notions of the public, private, and personal by introducing the public–private–personal “triad,” challenging the modern binary of the public and private. This original and insightful book will provoke readers to rethink their use of the personal and the private as two different notions for the same thing.

Acknowledgements
Part One: Recovering the Personal in Politics, Ethics, Culture, Law, History, and Theory
Personal in the Public Sphere: The Politics of Modernity Gandhi and the Ethics of the Personal: Is Personal the Terroristic Unity of Private and Public? Universal and Cultural Histories of the Personal Toward a Theory of the (New) Personal
Part Two: Engaging the Personal: Modernity, Legality, and the Practice of Helping
Personal in Colonial and Postcolonial Modernity: From Natural Personality to Personality of Organizations The Personal in Practice: Charity, Altruism to Social Work Epilogue: Personal Is Not Private: Rewriting Modernity for the Last Time Bibliography