“Another effect of this perspective is that historical individuals become simply symbolic representations of the larger group they are located in. I suspect something like this is happening in the case of interpreting the actions of Henry Dundas. The tortured logic of the revised plaque does not work up from the complex events and actions of his actual life. Rather, there is a view from above that ‘Edinburgh’, and probably more generally white Europeans, need to ‘atone’ for their sins, and therefore he must be cast as the emblem of those sins. This would help explain the rather cavalier approach to historical facts.”
– Professor Hearn
