ABSTRACT
This chapter examines how to understand events through historicising them. The task has been complicated by the ways in which public discourses surrounding South Asian masculinity have changed since the encounter took place. The chapter explores that how even though a specific event resonates with various racialised histories. It attempts to trace these histories through eliciting more explicit discourse about the event, recordings of talk in the event itself, interviews or statements after it; or documents, archives, or commentaries. In the remainder of the chapter, sketches out the way of approaching encounters with difference ethically that simultaneously allows for the role of memory, history and thought. It also explains the implications and the limitations of this kind of process of historicisation by turning to the second problematic, to act ethically in the event. The chapter shows that thinking about histories and memories of encountering racial difference can augment an understanding of how to act ethically in future events.
