The Presence of the Dead in Algorithm: Memory and Digital Immortality in Lauren Gunderson’s Anthropology
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.35516/Hum.2026.12635Keywords:
Anthropology, continuing bonds, digital immortality, grief, memoryAbstract
Objectives: This study examines how Lauren Gunderson’s play Anthropology (2023) represents the intersection of grief, memory reconstruction, and digital immortality through artificial intelligence. It explores how algorithmic simulation reshapes mourning rituals, rebuilds emotional connections, and challenges cultural perceptions of presence, absence, and identity.
Methods: The study analyzes Gunderson’s Anthropology (2023) by exploring its engagement with themes of grief, memory reconstruction, and AI. The analysis draws on grief studies and digital culture theory, using theoretical frameworks such as the continuing bonds theory and the concept of digital immortality. By situating the play within contemporary debates on identity, technology, and mourning, the study highlights how Gunderson reimagines the experience of loss and memory in the digital age.
Results: The analysis reveals that the play presents artificial intelligence as a force that combines both comfort and destabilization in the mourning process. The digital reconstruction of Angie’s character initially sustains emotional continuity but ultimately exposes the fragility of algorithmic memory. The play demonstrates how AI can rewrite identity, distort truth, and transform grief into illusion, while simultaneously offering new ways to renegotiate intimacy and confront unresolved trauma.
Conclusions: The study concludes that Gunderson’s Anthropology provides a critical perspective on digital mourning rituals in the age of artificial intelligence. While AI-driven reconstruction may appear to preserve presence and continuity, it threatens the authenticity and transformative depth of grief. The play underscores contemporary anxieties about technological interventions in memory and death, showing that digital immortality cannot replace human connection, but rather mirrors cultural struggles with loss and remembrance.
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