Genius requires belonging to a privileged caste that treats the universe as its own.

Evidence

Men we call great are those who—in one way or another—take the weight of the world on their shoulders; they have done more or less well, they have succeeded in re-creating it or they have failed; but they took on this enormous burden in the first place. This is what no woman has ever done, what no woman has ever been able to do. It takes belonging to the privileged caste to view the universe as one’s own, to consider oneself as guilty of its faults and take pride in its progress; those alone who are at the controls have the opportunity to justify it by changing, thinking, and revealing it; only they can identify with it and try to leave their imprint on it. Until now it has only been possible for Man to be incarnated in the man, not the woman. Moreover, individuals who appear exceptional to us, the ones we honor with the name of genius, are those who tried to work out the fate of all humanity in their particular lives. No woman has thought herself authorized to do that. How could van Gogh have been born woman? A woman would not have been sent on mission to Borinage, she would not have felt men’s misery as her own crime, she would not have sought redemption; so she would never have painted van Gogh’s sunflowers. And this is without taking into account that the painter’s kind of life—the solitude in Arles, going to cafés, whorehouses, everything that fed into van Gogh’s art by feeding his sensibility—would have been prohibited to her. A woman could never have become Kafka: in her doubts and anxieties, she would never have recognized the anguish of Man driven from paradise. Saint Teresa is one of the only women to have lived the human condition for herself, in total abandonment: we have seen why. Placing herself beyond earthly hierarchies, she, like Saint John of the Cross, felt no reassuring sky over her head. For both of them it was the same night, the same flashes of light, in each the same nothingness, in God the same plenitude. When finally it is possible for every human being to place his pride above sexual differences in the difficult glory of his free existence, only then will woman be able to make her history, her problems, her doubts, and her hopes those of humanity; only then will she be able to attempt to discover in her life and her works all of reality and not only her own person. As long as she still has to fight to become a human being, she cannot be a creator. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1951

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to Sartre’s bad faith and the privilege of transcendence; also echoes Achebe’s colonized subject denied authorship of history. — connects to: Intellectual gatherings concentrate influence and steer lower-rank intellectuals by caste spirit.; Invocations of merit mask privileged-caste nepotism and opposition to reservation.; Privileged castes selectively endorse essentialism that justifies privilege — , Rudman, Laurie A - On the Nature of…, 1413 (+3 more)
• DEFINE: Defines genius as a socially-permitted universalizing of individual fate, not innate talent.

Broader Connections

• Intellectual gatherings concentrate influence and steer lower-rank intellectuals by caste spirit. #expands (0.85)
• Privileged castes selectively endorse essentialism that justifies privilege #expands (0.82) — , Rudman, Laurie A - On the Nature of…, 1413
• A ruling class needs its own intellectuals to exercise hegemony alongside coercion #expands (0.80) — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1869
• Invocations of merit mask privileged-caste nepotism and opposition to reservation. #exemplifies (0.78)
• Colonial India’s national intelligentsia came from upper castes and state-linked professions #exemplifies (0.78) — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 119
• Traditional intellectuals can retain political dominance through an independent economic base #expands (0.75) — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 307