Abstract:

Ann Stoler reminds researchers to not avoid examining the toxic corrosion of the material environment and people's bodies and minds that results from coloniality. This panel addresses the alienation and remaking of the heritage of persecuted Turkic Muslims in Xinjiang. Approaching the problem of heritage and memory preservation of Uyghurs and Kazakhs displaced from their homes through literary, lyrical, and legal materials, we demonstrate that displacement and cultural destruction have long-reaching generational effects on communities living in and outside of China. The well-known oppression of Turkic Muslims in China through detention and surveillance penetrates nearly every aspect of the lives of people living in Xinjiang and Xinjiang Kazakhs and Uyghurs living abroad. The full extent of the trauma of family separation and the inability of people to see their families or visit their natal homes will be unknown for some time. This panel seeks an entry point to discuss some of these long-term material and embodied effects.

The panelists approach this topic from four perspectives: Zhaina Meirkhan argues that Xinjiang Kazakhs who relocated from China to Kazakhstan engage in a remapping of Kazakh identity negotiated between the two states, neither of which fully accept Xinjiang Kazakhs. Tim Grose argues that the creation and sharing of Uyghur songs about wätän or homeland constitute a kind of pilgrimage that connects disparate groups of Uyhgur listeners to an abstract notion of home. Guldana Salimjan argues that under the guise of environmentalism, government and corporate interests have systematically taken Xinjiang Kazakhs’ land and thus illustrates the fundamental operation of Indigenous displacement in Xinjiang, with the ancillary effect of leaving diasporic Xinjiang Kazakhs rootless and propertyless. Darren Byler argues that the state in Xinjiang criminalizes the protectors of local culture and tradition to erase the embodied history of their communities and facilitate the ongoing rewriting of Xinjiang’s history to fit the narrative of the People's Republic of China.