From voice to silence: the shrinking space for Uyghur narratives of belonging in reform China

ABSTRACT

Based on a close reading of three narratives, the article explores subtle shifts in the textual strategies employed by Uyghur intellectuals in Xinjiang in conveying identity discourses in different phases of the reform era. Although it is tempting to view these texts in terms of resistance, they are better approached as sites of accommodation, motivated by the wish to bolster a sense of Uyghur belonging without jeopardizing individual and communal self-preservation. Increasing political pressure on indigenous knowledge production culminated in 2016 in brutal silencing. Shifting textual strategies in the preceding decades demonstrate how native narratives creatively shaped and redefined representations of the ‘Uyghur’ as an ethnic group in constant dialogical negotiation with the changing socio-political context; the texts can thus be read as sensitive barometers of policy changes.

KEYWORDS:

• Uyghur elite
• narrative
• local history
• ethnography
• identity
• reform China

Acknowledgments

I am grateful for the helpful comments of Chris Hann, Aysima Mirsultan, Rune Steenberg and the anonymous reviewers.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1. Such provisions were included in the Law on Regional and Ethnic Autonomy, see Millward, Eurasian Crossroads, 278.

2. For a recent overview of these developments, see Hasmath, ‘What Explains,’ 48–49; and Smith Finley, The Art of Symbolic Resistance, 23–77. On the Islamic revival and religious repression, see Harris and Isa, ‘Islam by Smartphone,’ 62–67; and Smith Finley, The Art of Symbolic Resistance, 274–284.

3. See, for example, Klimeš, ‘Advancing “Ethnic Unity”.

4. On the current situation, see Zenz, ‘Thoroughly Reforming Them’; and Smith Finley, Securitization.

5. Ma ‘Reconstructing “nation”’; and Smith Finley, ‘Securitization,’ 9–12.

6. Smith Finley, The Art of Symbolic Resistance, 289.

7. Due to the current political climate it has been impossible to pay due attention to the reception of such works.

8. Thum, The Sacred Routes; and Newby, ‘“Us and Them”.’ For perhaps the most influential study emphasizing the role of the party-state in creating a Uyghur identity, see Gladney, Dislocating China, 227.

9. Thum, The Sacred Routes, 134–143.

10. Light, ‘Muslim Histories of China.’

11. Brophy, Uyghur Nation; and Klimeš, Struggle by the Pen.

12. Bovingdon and Tursun, ‘Contested Histories,’ 363–368.

13. See Steenberg in this volume.

14. Bovingdon, The Uyghurs, 99–101.

15. Reyhan, ‘Die uigurische Kulturindustrie.’

16. For example, Isra’il, Altun käsh.

17. Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge, 115, 208–209.

18. Somers, ‘The Narrative Constitution.’

19. Brubaker and Cooper, ‘Beyond Identity,’ 5.

20. Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition.

21. Niyaz, Tarikhtin, 89–95.

22. Mätqasim, Tarimdiki, 7.

23. See above 20.

24. Ricoeur, Time and Narrative, 66.

25. Mätqasim, Tarimdiki, 7.

26. This vague definition does not contradict Thum’s findings concerning the traditional tazkirah, see Thum, Sacred Routes, 41–51.

27. Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imagination, 84–85.

28. Niyaz, Tarikhtin, 18–9.

29. Mätqasim, Tarimdiki, 155.

30. For example, Mätqasim, Tarimdiki, 43–44, 57, 63, 70, 72, 122, 178, 180, 185, 197, 199, 262–265, 274, 270, 278ff.

31. Yasin and Ämät, Mush, 302–355.

32. Ibid., 357–358.

33. Ibid., 380–386.

34. Ibid., 222–223.

35. Thum, ‘Beyond Resistance and Nationalism.’

36. Niyaz, Tarikhtin, 238–243.

37. Yasin and Ämät, Mush, 284–288. For the original novel, see Äli, Apaq Khoja.

38. The main tenets of the nation state’s grand récit appear in school textbooks, scholarly publications in Chinese and Uyghur, pamphlets and propaganda writings such as white papers issued by the government available in Chinese, Uyghur and English For a recent Chinese government white paper on Xinjiang’s history see http://www.china.org.cn/government/whitepaper/node_8013442.html.

39. On such markers see Edson, ‘Heritage,’ 341.

40. Niyaz, Tarikhtin, 123, 281, 59–61.

41. Ibid., 101–105.

42. Ibid., 17.

43. Ibid., 14.

44. These are my analytical terms.

45. Niyaz, Tarikhtin, 24, 33–34.

46. Ibid., 191–193.

47. Ibid., 208–209, 212.

48. Ibid., 213–214.

49. Ibid., 217.

50. Mätqasim, Tarimdiki, 70, 75.

51. Ibid., 48.

52. Ibid., 20–29, 39, 360–362.

53. Ibid., 30–31, 38, 119–120.

54. Ibid., 30.

55. Ibid., 154, 173–174.

56. Ibid., 51, 75.

57. Ibid., 102–107, 117, 279.

58. Ibid., 44.

59. Ibid., 101, 178.

60. Ibid., 276. The expression is apparently a reference to members of Xinjiang’s Production and Construction Corps (bingtuan), which usually employs members of the Han ethnicity.

61. Ibid., 180.

62. Ibid., 281. This is a cautious reference to local government efforts to recruit local people to spy and report on fellow villagers who participate in religious activities deemed illegal.

63. Ibid., 53, 56, 199, 272–273.

64. Ibid., 93–94. Such sentiments are also voiced by other authors of the period, see for example Tokhti, Sän bizni, 339–345.

65. Yasin and Ämät, Mush, 400.

66. This is a reference to the ‘New Socialist Countryside’ development program introduced from the mid-2000s across China with far-reaching consequences for communities and property rights, see Looney, ‘China’s Campaign.’

67. Yasin and Ämät, Mush, 29–52.

68. Ibid., 52, 78.

69. Ibid., 114–129.

70. Ibid., 241, 254–259, 268.

71. Ibid., 281–282.

72. See above 13.

73. Weigelin-Schwiedrzik, ‘In Search.’ An increasing readiness to speak about these dark periods seems to be part of a more general trend in Xinjiang and beyond, especially in the 2000s. For examples, see Namät, Tinimsiz; Sawut, ‘Män basqan izlär’; and Tömür, ‘Azatliqtin burunqi.’

74. De Baets, ‘Power, Freedom and Censorship,’ 21.

75. Perdue, ‘War Qing-China,’ 278.

76. Hartog, ‘Regimes of Historicity.’

77. McCormack, ‘Writing a Singular Past,’ 300.

Additional information

Funding

This research is part of the project ‘Between homogenization and fragmentation: textual practices as strategies of integration and identity maintenance among the Uyghurs of Xinjiang, China (20th-21st centuries)’ funded by the Velux Fonden (Denmark) 2017–2020, no. [111687, 2017–2020].

Notes on contributors

Ildikó Bellér-Hann

Ildikó Bellér-Hann is Associate Professor at the University of Copenhagen where she teaches Turkish and Central Asian Studies. After studying Turkish, Archaeology, and English at the Lórand Eötvös University in Budapest, she received her Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge (in Turkish) and her habilitation degree from the Humboldt University, Berlin (in Central Asian Studies). She has held positions at Newnham College, Cambridge, UK, the University of Kent in Canterbury, UK, and the Martin Luther University in Halle, Germany. Her main interests span the histories and societies, historical anthropology, social support networks, kinship, and oral and literate traditions of the Turkic-speaking peoples of Xinjiang, Turkey, and Central Asia. She is the author of Community Matters in Xinjiang, 1880–1949: Towards a Historical Anthropology of the Uyghur (Brill, 2008); and Negotiating Identities. Work, Religion, Gender, and the Mobilization of Tradition Among the Uyghur in the 1990s (LIT Verlag, 2015).