The Right to be Forgotten and the Image-Crimes of Digital Culture

Abstract

The questioning guiding this chapter is not a matter of aesthetics, that is, what technology is most seductive or attractive to watch, which projection narrates the story most accurately, or how the interface illustrates the concepts underlying the practice. Rather it is an attempt at a grounding theory of the culture that for many people exists in digitised societies, taking into account the manner in which their identities and subjectivities are constructed, negotiated and, in some cases, exploited and abused. This chapter examines how experiences of identity and trauma are altered by the ceaseless circulation of material within the folds of social media, the obscurity of the darknet, the coded disguises of crypto-anarchism, the removable media of the sneaker- net and the commercial appropriation of identity through Google, Facebook, etc. The chapter investigates where there might be a shared experience between the electronic performance of the self both on stage and online, the forfeiting of the private to the narcissism of a virtual public, and the most controversial examples of image-crimes taking place in the possession and distribution of data contained in revenge porn (RP) and child sexual abuse images (CSAI).