What do you think?
Rate this book
Bury the Corpse of Colonialism: The Revolutionary Feminist Conference of 1949
An intimate look at the 1949 Asian Women’s Conference, the movements it drew from, and its influence on feminist anticolonialism around the world.
In 1949, revolutionary activists from Asia hosted a conference in Beijing that gathered together their comrades from around the world. The Asian Women’s Conference developed a new political strategy, demanding that women from occupying colonial nations contest imperialism with the same dedication as women whose countries were occupied. Bury the Corpse of Colonialism shows how activists and movements create a revolutionary theory over time and through struggle—in this case, by launching a strategy for anti-imperialist feminist internationalism.
At the heart of this book are two stories. The first describes how the 1949 conference came to be, how it was experienced, and what it produced. The second follows the delegates home. What movements did they represent? Whose voices did they carry? How did their struggles hone their praxis? By examining the lives of more than a dozen AWC participants, Bury the Corpse of Colonialism traces the vital differences at the heart of internationalist solidarity for women’s emancipation in a world structured through militarism, capitalism, patriarchy, and the seeming impossibility of justice.
In 1949, revolutionary activists from Asia hosted a conference in Beijing that gathered together their comrades from around the world. The Asian Women’s Conference developed a new political strategy, demanding that women from occupying colonial nations contest imperialism with the same dedication as women whose countries were occupied. Bury the Corpse of Colonialism shows how activists and movements create a revolutionary theory over time and through struggle—in this case, by launching a strategy for anti-imperialist feminist internationalism.
At the heart of this book are two stories. The first describes how the 1949 conference came to be, how it was experienced, and what it produced. The second follows the delegates home. What movements did they represent? Whose voices did they carry? How did their struggles hone their praxis? By examining the lives of more than a dozen AWC participants, Bury the Corpse of Colonialism traces the vital differences at the heart of internationalist solidarity for women’s emancipation in a world structured through militarism, capitalism, patriarchy, and the seeming impossibility of justice.
206 pages, Hardcover
Published March 14, 2023
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
August 14, 2023
This does a great job introducing us to some of the influential women of the 20th century whose stories until now have been largely overlooked. It gets a little bogged down by the frequent switching between stories, that it starts to lose some of its narrative thrust as it relates to the formation of the AWC, because the return back to the movement after giving a short bio of each woman became somewhat redundant. Still, a powerful testament to the necessity of anti-colonial, anti-imperialist, and anti-racist ideologies in feminist movements, as much today as back then.
May 15, 2024
This book not only uncovers the obscured history of the Asian Women's Conference (AWC), where revolutionary leaders worldwide convened to shape a framework pivotal for combating imperialism in the 21st century, but it also presents a fresh perspective on propaganda, which I found particularly insightful.
While propaganda is often defined as any medium transmitting an ideology aiming to manipulate and stifle critical thinking, Armstrong offers an alternative definition that I find to be a more honest depiction of how ideology is formed, especially in mass movements.
Armstrong defines propaganda as a tool for understanding how revolutionary theories emerge from collective struggle. Dismissing the simplistic notion of it being merely biased or manipulative media, Armstrong portrays propaganda as a methodology that outlines the genesis of a collective voice without erasing the diverse and contentious origins from which this voice emerges.
In the case of the AWC, the propaganda circulated following the conference reflected the consensus achieved after extensive hours of debate and dialogue among the hundreds of participants, encompassing perspectives that often clashed during the conference. Armstrong argues that propaganda offers a more honest reflection of history than other sources, as it distills a collective experience that captures the broader sweep of a movement, surpassing the limits of individual subjectivity.
While there's not much more I can say about the book without just rewriting it, I greatly appreciate Armstrong's narrative approach in telling history. Through seemingly ordinary vignettes, she unveils a broader truth about the contextual backdrop in which this historical event unfolded.
While propaganda is often defined as any medium transmitting an ideology aiming to manipulate and stifle critical thinking, Armstrong offers an alternative definition that I find to be a more honest depiction of how ideology is formed, especially in mass movements.
Armstrong defines propaganda as a tool for understanding how revolutionary theories emerge from collective struggle. Dismissing the simplistic notion of it being merely biased or manipulative media, Armstrong portrays propaganda as a methodology that outlines the genesis of a collective voice without erasing the diverse and contentious origins from which this voice emerges.
In the case of the AWC, the propaganda circulated following the conference reflected the consensus achieved after extensive hours of debate and dialogue among the hundreds of participants, encompassing perspectives that often clashed during the conference. Armstrong argues that propaganda offers a more honest reflection of history than other sources, as it distills a collective experience that captures the broader sweep of a movement, surpassing the limits of individual subjectivity.
While there's not much more I can say about the book without just rewriting it, I greatly appreciate Armstrong's narrative approach in telling history. Through seemingly ordinary vignettes, she unveils a broader truth about the contextual backdrop in which this historical event unfolded.
September 25, 2025
A refreshingly inspiring, and not incidentally obscured, piece of history!
July 5, 2023
In 2016 I was in Hanoi for international women's day. I had never heard of international women's day before. It's not a big deal in Canada.
I was there with my partner, and local Vietnamese lady came up to her and gave her a pink rose and wished her a happy international women's day.
Before reading this book I never thought much the meaning of that moment. I thought about the moment a lot - because it was a really cool moment. But I didn't realize the story behind it.
Reading this book helps me contextualize that moment, and gain an appreciation for the anticolonial fight for peace that women have been pioneering for over 70 years.
Highly recommend this book.
I was there with my partner, and local Vietnamese lady came up to her and gave her a pink rose and wished her a happy international women's day.
Before reading this book I never thought much the meaning of that moment. I thought about the moment a lot - because it was a really cool moment. But I didn't realize the story behind it.
Reading this book helps me contextualize that moment, and gain an appreciation for the anticolonial fight for peace that women have been pioneering for over 70 years.
Highly recommend this book.
December 30, 2023
What an incredible overview of international socialist feminism from roughly 1940-1960. This is the book your liberal feminist comrades need. Not only does it cover the movement, it succinctly reviews anticommunism, socialism, and feminist socialism in the context of the post-ww2 geopolitical order.
Not only is it meaty, it’s wonderfully written. Every sentence is economical fire, honed razor sharp to connect her points. Armstrong set out to make a piece of propaganda and, with the most generous understanding of that word, it is absolutely stunning.
Not only is it meaty, it’s wonderfully written. Every sentence is economical fire, honed razor sharp to connect her points. Armstrong set out to make a piece of propaganda and, with the most generous understanding of that word, it is absolutely stunning.
June 26, 2026
Oh boy. This is an utter disappointment and a sorry excuse for a monograph on history.
My evaluation / feelings towards this book are based on this premise: that this book sought to make an archive-grounded, empirical, historical argument about the global womens' movement in the Postwar period. In light of that goal, this book utterly fails.
I want to make clear that my venom for this book has nothing to do with its politics, which I share wholeheartedly. its just so bad at what it tries to do.
I could seriously go on and on about specific examples and things that bugged me but I will try to be as brief as possible. Let us first turn to the historical argument and method.
Her first argument is that the Asian Women's Conference 1949 is the unacknowledged source for the praxis of global left-wing women's activism in the following years. She does not come even close to demonstrating this. The closest she gets is that one of the attendees of the AWC was involved with the WIDF's Korea campaign.
Her second argument can be said to be that the AWC prefigured the Afro-Asian solidarity shown at Bandung. I would have loved for this to be true. She does not once engage the historiography on this question. The closest we get is "there were some African women at the AWC".
A third argument is that the organizers invited to the AWC represented the subaltern women they organized with, and so the results of the AWC can be said to have come directly from the experiences of organizing these subaltern groups. there are serious methodological flaws here. First of all, if the implication is that by virtue of working with subaltern groups the women of the AWC were able to "channel" their demands and subjectivity perfectly, then that is a non-starter. Setting aside theoretical concerns on if this is even possible (its not), she undermines this would-be claim by demonstrating clear instances where the original instincts of individual delegates were shot down or altered by the political exigencies of the conference leaders. If that is not the implication, then there is almost nothing to this thesis. At most, you could say that this shared organizing activity gave them access to a special "consciousness", but it says nothing about whether this consciousness was adopted or rejected. and then we circle back to the start.
Her fourth and final major argument is that the history she is seeking to uncover/recover has been purposefully suppressed by a historiography inflected by racism and Cold War political needs. The lack of an archive, she posits, results from systematic epistemic violence. This seems flatly precluded by her own evidence, and by the standard account of the archival provenance of the field. She has access to diary / journal accounts of the AWC and refuses to use them in any meaningful way. She herself points out that the WIDF leadership seemingly did not make an effort to publicize the conference when it happened. The main absence she feels is a lack of conference minutes and proceedings information. She does not stop to acknowledge that the Chinese hosts of the conference, the ones most likely to have any extant documents, do not allow easy access to those documents (it's unclear to me if she even has Chinese as a language just by the way). The other thing is, that she does not stop to wonder why constantly-surveilled organizers would not carry print transcripts of all the seditious things they said abroad when they returned home. She makes such a big deal out of absence, when it is perhaps one of the defining archival realities of the field that the archive is fragmentary, dispersed, in the hands of private collectors, and partially lost/destroyed.
The last thing isn't even an argument but the lack of an argument, namely her refusal to engage the question of the WIDF's autonomy from the Comintern (or alleged lack thereof). This is where arguments #3 and #4 would have greatly benefited from some reflection.
I could keep going with a couple more things but its too much and im tired
A closing note on the prose. I got quite annoyed by the constant assertions and rhetoric. It felt entirely inappropriate for a work of academic history. There are some sections that could have been enjoyable if I read them in another context, purely from a literary perspective. maybe this should have been a trade book and not a monograph
My evaluation / feelings towards this book are based on this premise: that this book sought to make an archive-grounded, empirical, historical argument about the global womens' movement in the Postwar period. In light of that goal, this book utterly fails.
I want to make clear that my venom for this book has nothing to do with its politics, which I share wholeheartedly. its just so bad at what it tries to do.
I could seriously go on and on about specific examples and things that bugged me but I will try to be as brief as possible. Let us first turn to the historical argument and method.
Her first argument is that the Asian Women's Conference 1949 is the unacknowledged source for the praxis of global left-wing women's activism in the following years. She does not come even close to demonstrating this. The closest she gets is that one of the attendees of the AWC was involved with the WIDF's Korea campaign.
Her second argument can be said to be that the AWC prefigured the Afro-Asian solidarity shown at Bandung. I would have loved for this to be true. She does not once engage the historiography on this question. The closest we get is "there were some African women at the AWC".
A third argument is that the organizers invited to the AWC represented the subaltern women they organized with, and so the results of the AWC can be said to have come directly from the experiences of organizing these subaltern groups. there are serious methodological flaws here. First of all, if the implication is that by virtue of working with subaltern groups the women of the AWC were able to "channel" their demands and subjectivity perfectly, then that is a non-starter. Setting aside theoretical concerns on if this is even possible (its not), she undermines this would-be claim by demonstrating clear instances where the original instincts of individual delegates were shot down or altered by the political exigencies of the conference leaders. If that is not the implication, then there is almost nothing to this thesis. At most, you could say that this shared organizing activity gave them access to a special "consciousness", but it says nothing about whether this consciousness was adopted or rejected. and then we circle back to the start.
Her fourth and final major argument is that the history she is seeking to uncover/recover has been purposefully suppressed by a historiography inflected by racism and Cold War political needs. The lack of an archive, she posits, results from systematic epistemic violence. This seems flatly precluded by her own evidence, and by the standard account of the archival provenance of the field. She has access to diary / journal accounts of the AWC and refuses to use them in any meaningful way. She herself points out that the WIDF leadership seemingly did not make an effort to publicize the conference when it happened. The main absence she feels is a lack of conference minutes and proceedings information. She does not stop to acknowledge that the Chinese hosts of the conference, the ones most likely to have any extant documents, do not allow easy access to those documents (it's unclear to me if she even has Chinese as a language just by the way). The other thing is, that she does not stop to wonder why constantly-surveilled organizers would not carry print transcripts of all the seditious things they said abroad when they returned home. She makes such a big deal out of absence, when it is perhaps one of the defining archival realities of the field that the archive is fragmentary, dispersed, in the hands of private collectors, and partially lost/destroyed.
The last thing isn't even an argument but the lack of an argument, namely her refusal to engage the question of the WIDF's autonomy from the Comintern (or alleged lack thereof). This is where arguments #3 and #4 would have greatly benefited from some reflection.
I could keep going with a couple more things but its too much and im tired
A closing note on the prose. I got quite annoyed by the constant assertions and rhetoric. It felt entirely inappropriate for a work of academic history. There are some sections that could have been enjoyable if I read them in another context, purely from a literary perspective. maybe this should have been a trade book and not a monograph
January 30, 2025
#readforaclassayay! #fourthyearwomen'shealthclassyay!
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews