The Swastika

Constructing the Symbol

By: Malcolm Quinn

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Hardcover | 3 November 1994 | Edition Number 1

At a Glance

Hardcover
212 Pages

Age
18

Dimensions(cm)
23.4 x 15.6 x 1.27

Hardcover

$528.75

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Despite the enormous amount of material on the subject of Nazism, there has been no substantial work on its emblem, the swastika. This original and controversial contribution looks at the popular appeal of the archaic image of the swastika: the tradition of the symbol. Taking as its starting point its use in the twentieth century as self-representation and "mass mnemonic" by Nazism, it is examined as a symbolic phenomenon in a cultural context. Its echoes can be detected not only in "new right" movements in Europe, but also in the rhetoric of corporate design. By identifying the swastika as a trigger image Malcolm Quinn allies visual sense to issues of material culture and history. He shows how in this century, in particular, the atavistic, talismanic swastika appeared in sharper and more grotesque relief. In a micro-historical investigation embracing archaeology, symbolic anthropology and the history of art, this book shows how the swastika first became connected to a race theory in the nineteenth century, and then in Nazism became a sign threatening a colonisation of both East and West. It also suggests ways in which Nazism might be explained or represented by the swastika, showing how the creation of a symbol was linked to the construction of the symbolic identities of nation, speech and race.

Industry Reviews

"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

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