Discursive practices that are used by members of a profession to shape events in the domains subject to their professional scrutiny create the objects of knowledge that become the insignia of a profession’s craft: the theories, artifacts, and bodies of expertise that distinguish it from other professions. The 1992 trial of four police officers videotaped beating an African-American motorist became a politically charged theater of contested vision. Opposing sides in the case used the murky pixels of the same television image to display to the jury incommensurate events: a brutal, savage beating of a man lying helpless on the ground versus careful police response to a dangerous “PCP-crazed giant.” The lawyers successfully defending the policemen used many of the practices examined in earlier chapters, including highlighting, coding, and graphic annotation, to shape what the jury could see on the tape as proper police response to a dangerous suspect, rather than the beating of a helpless man. The Rodney King trial provides a vivid example of how the ability to see a meaningful event is not a transparent, psychological process but instead a socially situated activity accomplished through the deployment of a range of historically constituted discursive practices.

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