Pressestimmen
"For too long, the archeology of knowledge about the swastika has been confined to books and part-works which belong roughly mid-way between Nazi nostolgia and the occult. Malcolm Quinn's well-argued study helps to relocate the swastika within a variety of fresh contexts: the parallel histories of archeology, colonization and design; polemics about the ways in which symbols work; analysis of the rhetoric of the image. The point, as he says, is to break the chain of reference from image to image, the means by which the symbol is constructed.' So this book is about symbolism, rather than Nazism, and it represents an important and even courageous contribution to the study of visual culture since the late nineteenth century."
-Christopher Frayling, Professor of Cultural History, Royal College of Art
-Christopher Frayling, Professor of Cultural History, Royal College of Art
Kurzbeschreibung
The Swasitika is the first substantial work specifically on the swastika as an emblem. While it is difficult to disconnect the swastika from its use by the Nazis, the emblem is a much older symbol with deep roots in mythical Aryan tradition. In this book, Malcom Quinn describes the historical and mythical significance of the emblem, and shows how the Nazis used this significance to construct a political symbol, enhancing its symbolic meanings, and encrusting it with new ones. In this way the Nazis latched on to an image with great inherent power.
