In the Wakes of Rodney King: Militant Evidence and Media Activism in the Age of Viral Black Death

Abstract

This essay explores the historical and critical legacy of the Rodney King tape, namely, its transformation of the concerns of the field of documentary studies in the turn toward “visible evidence” in the 1990s. This turn privileged the power of visibility, particularly in radical and activist practices, but visibility is a fraught concept for minority subjects. I argue for an approach called “militant evidence” as an expanded and updated framework for media activism and the use of visible evidence. In this formulation, accumulated visible evidence is deployed within larger media and activist ecologies toward an abolition of police violence.