If pride be the primary block on the path to God, then indeed decentering the rapacious self is the work of grace. But the situation is quite different when this language is applied to persons already relegated to the margins of significance and excluded from the exercise of self-definition. For such persons, language of conversion as loss of self, turning from amor sui, functions in an ideological way to rob them of power, maintaining them in a subordinate position to the benefit of those who rule.
