@article{ART003373038},
author={Lee, ranhee},
title={Imperfect Memory, Forgetting, and the Ethics of Prosthetic Memory: Ayad Akhtar’s McNeal},
journal={Journal of Modern English Drama},
issn={1226-3397},
year={2026},
volume={39},
number={2},
pages={113-142}
TY - JOUR
AU - Lee, ranhee
TI - Imperfect Memory, Forgetting, and the Ethics of Prosthetic Memory: Ayad Akhtar’s McNeal
JO - Journal of Modern English Drama
PY - 2026
VL - 39
IS - 2
PB - 한국현대영미드라마학회
SP - 113
EP - 142
SN - 1226-3397
AB - Ayad Akhtar’s play McNeal (2024), which dramatizes the life of Jacob McNeal—a playwright who uses artificial intelligence to write plays in the near future, illustrates the sharp dilemma of modern society regarding how to handle private memories in an era where there is hope that technological prosthetics can preserve, replicate, and even enhance memories. The work culminates in a conflict as McNeal, a Nobel Prize-winning author, uploads his deceased wife’s diary into a language model and instructs it to extract and rewrite the content in the ‘Jacob McNeal style.’ This paper aims to analyze McNeal through discussions on Paul Ricoeur’s ‘Narrative Identity’ and ‘Ethics of Memory’, as well as Bernard Stiegler’s ‘Pharmakon’—a perspective that views technology as a drug—and ‘epiphylogenesis’—descriptive memory as externalized memory.
By juxtaposing Ricoeur’s emphasis that narrative memory demands moral deliberation and consideration for others with Stiegler’s view that descriptive memory simultaneously expands and impoverishes human individuality, this paper seeks to demonstrate how the dramatic techniques shown in Akhtar’s McNeal stage the ethical demands of memory and the structural limitations of correction in the era of prosthetic memory.
KW - imperfect memory;forgetting;prosthetic memory;externalization of memory;pharmakon
DO -
UR -
ER -
Lee, ranhee. (2026). Imperfect Memory, Forgetting, and the Ethics of Prosthetic Memory: Ayad Akhtar’s McNeal. Journal of Modern English Drama, 39(2), 113-142.
Lee, ranhee. 2026, "Imperfect Memory, Forgetting, and the Ethics of Prosthetic Memory: Ayad Akhtar’s McNeal", Journal of Modern English Drama, vol.39, no.2 pp.113-142.
Lee, ranhee "Imperfect Memory, Forgetting, and the Ethics of Prosthetic Memory: Ayad Akhtar’s McNeal" Journal of Modern English Drama 39.2 pp.113-142 (2026) : 113.
Lee, ranhee. Imperfect Memory, Forgetting, and the Ethics of Prosthetic Memory: Ayad Akhtar’s McNeal. 2026; 39(2), 113-142.
Lee, ranhee. "Imperfect Memory, Forgetting, and the Ethics of Prosthetic Memory: Ayad Akhtar’s McNeal" Journal of Modern English Drama 39, no.2 (2026) : 113-142.
Lee, ranhee. Imperfect Memory, Forgetting, and the Ethics of Prosthetic Memory: Ayad Akhtar’s McNeal. Journal of Modern English Drama, 39(2), 113-142.
Lee, ranhee. Imperfect Memory, Forgetting, and the Ethics of Prosthetic Memory: Ayad Akhtar’s McNeal. Journal of Modern English Drama. 2026; 39(2) 113-142.
Lee, ranhee. Imperfect Memory, Forgetting, and the Ethics of Prosthetic Memory: Ayad Akhtar’s McNeal. 2026; 39(2), 113-142.
Lee, ranhee. "Imperfect Memory, Forgetting, and the Ethics of Prosthetic Memory: Ayad Akhtar’s McNeal" Journal of Modern English Drama 39, no.2 (2026) : 113-142.
