Cognitive Deoccupation: How the Crimean Tatars Responded to Settler Colonial Violence after the 2014 Russian Occupation of Crimea

• In Event: Regimes of Violence in Russian-occupied Crimea

Abstract

The longevity of settler colonial violence in Crimea raises important questions about the potential antidotes to this form of social, economic, and political dispossession. This paper explores cognitive deoccupation as a modality for the successful and permanent military deoccupation of the peninsula. Conceived by the Indigenous Crimean Tatar people, cognitive deoccupation calls for reorganizing the discourse on indigenous sovereignty along the lines of mutual interests instead of old fears and tropes, and requires intensive work with the values, emotions, and beliefs that have informed and indeed continue to form views of Crimea and Crimean Tatars.

Author

• Greta Uehling, U of Michigan