ABSTRACT
As Dipesh Chakrabarty notes, subaltern studies emerged from the postcolonial context of India, where scholars initially sought to write marginalized peoples into the history of the nation, while also “combating all elitist biases in the writing of history”. Subaltern theorists propose forms of writing the past that perform the limits of history, in which time is knotted rather than continuous, linear, and homogenous. This chapter argues that subaltern writing techniques not only ask us to reimagine how we write critical dance histories, but they also offer rich fodder for choreographers grappling with the complex, post/colonial histories of their bodies. In blood run, it investigates the rumor that my Taiwanese Hoklo Han lineage might include Pingpu or plains indigenous bloodlines. The salon area is the only one without a live performer, a physical absence of the courtesan that suggests the difficulty of accessing subaltern knowledge.
