Subjective Identity and the Right to be Forgotten: A Multifaceted Claim in the Legal System

Abstract

In the complex relationship between individual identity and its claims for recognition and protection by the legal system, the right to be forgotten is crucial, because it addresses a personal, social and legal definition of the individual as authentically as possible and highlights the uniqueness of each identity, with changes experienced in the temporal dimension. The lack of distinction in real life between the physical world and the analogue context traces new spatial and temporal coordinates, able to profoundly redefine the traditional categories of identity and difference, as well as to modify the usual dynamics of personal and social inclusion and exclusion, submitting identity to a process of dismemberment that makes the individual a complex ‘informational organism’. The multiple connections between the right to be forgotten and the protection of personal identity are confirmed by the most recent developments of European legislation and, in particular, in Italian jurisprudence, which outlines it as an identity claim in order to obtain a correct representation of oneself, resulting in the guarantee offered by the legal system of reconfiguring one’s telematic image. This describes an evolving and comprehensive right capable of protecting the originality of the individual and his/her representation and relationships.