Simone de Beauvoir and the Politics of Privilege

How should socially privileged white feminists (and others) address their privilege? Often, individuals are urged to overcome their own personal racism through a politics of self‐transformation. The paper argues that this strategy may be problematic, since it rests on an over‐autonomous conception of the self. The paper turns to Simone de Beauvoir for an alternative account of the self, as “situated,” and explores what this means for a politics of privilege.