Rape and the Memex

Abstract

This essay tracks conflicting messages of embodiment and symbolic exchange in the infamous “Mr. Bungle” affair in which a chatroom avatar was forcibly removed from the participant’s control. I argue that many scholarly treatments recapitulate a binary of real and virtual space in order to evaluate the event according to broader social norms, rather than attending to its specific material context. A discussion of the history of the internet and Vannevar Bush’s ‘memex’ authorises a more nuanced reading of the metaphor of rape in terms of systematised memory and narrativity.