The Sinicized self: prejudice,epistemology and Uyghur perceptions of their bodies

ABSTRACT

The ‘Sinicization’ of the Uyghur world – that is, the pervasive progression of Chinese influence into it – is a familiar topic of both Uyghur complaint and academic writing on Xinjiang. In this article, I discuss the striking appearance of this same motif in reference to the Sinicization of the physical Uyghur body, and use this example to argue that the communally enforced moral separation of the Uyghur from the Chinese, and the particular understanding of history that underpins this, have epistemological consequences for how the Uyghur people see themselves and the world.