Absent referent

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The empty set is an example of the absent referent.

Absent referent (sometimes missing referent, or missing antecedent) is a concept that originated in linguistics, and is the condition of a sign that has an empty, absent, contingent, paradoxical, hypothetical, supernatural, or undefined referent. The idea is used in a number of disciplines.

Memorials

William Mitchell Ramsey said of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, "Because each of the 58,022 names points to an absent referent the wall's script remains a half-formed discourse, or signifiers in search of a concept to signify."^[1]

Ethics

The vegan feminist author Carol J. Adams was the first to politicize the concept of the absent referent. In her 1990 book The Sexual Politics of Meat, she explains a psycho-social detachment that occurs between the consumer and the "Other" when people eat meat. She writes :

Behind every meal of meat is an absence: the death of the animal whose place the meat takes. The "absent referent" is that which separates the meat eater from the animal and the animal from the end product. The function of the absent referent is to keep our "meat" separated from any idea that she or he was once an animal, to keep the "moo" or "cluck" or "baa" away from the meat, to keep something from being seen as having been someone.^[2]

Adams also identified how women were made absent referents in a patriarchal culture.

In a variety of political contexts, the "absent referent" is a phrase used to call attention to some group or constituency that the author feels is being unjustly ignored. This usage of the phrase appears to arise out of Frankfurt School or deconstructionist terminology, and is usually associated with the political Left. For example, in a 2001 paper entitled The Sexual Politics of Sneakers: "Common Ground" and Absent-Referent Stories in the Nike Debate, David M. Boje -- who was directly influenced by Adams's articulation of a politicized absent referent -- argues that there is an absent referent in the debate between Nike and its critics, "namely, the workers themselves."^[3]

Linguistics

The sentence as sign

Generally, a written symbol or spoken word is considered the sign, but a cluster of words can also be considered signs with a referent idea. However, not every combination of words has meaning or a referent idea. Some combinations of words are nonsensical and constitute what some call "word salad". Linguist Noam Chomsky is famous for his phrase, "Colorless green ideas sleep furiously", which is used to demonstrate the idea between syntax and meaning.

American Sign Language

In American Sign Language, there is a notion of a space present referent and a space absent referent.^[4] When the referent of a pronoun is present in the room as the person performing the ASL intrepretation (such as "I" or "she"), it is acceptable practice to gesture to the person or object. However, in the space absent case, a gesture is made into empty space.

Religion

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Blasphemy

Occurring in some sects of Judaism, and in other religions, there is a practice to substitute the symbol "G-d" for the written name of the Divine. This act both recognizes the sin of blasphemy, and simultaneously tries to circumvent it. While writing the actual name of God is considered sinful by certain sects, writing "G-d" apparently is permissible, because it is not a direct pointer to the Divine. It is a direct pointer to nothing, and is thus example of the Absent Referent.

The God Concept

In Logical Positivism, Atheism, Rationalism, Empiricism, Epistemology, General Semantics, Metalinguistics and related disciplines, there is a suggestion that communicated symbols should represent observable truths. Any symbols which are not pointers to observable truth represent either arbitrary preferences, or meaningless fictions (which the Logical Positivists called metaphysics).

The written word "God", or the voiced sound of that word, is thus a meaningless symbol, since this allegedly transcendental object cannot be directly observed. Any object which cannot be directly observed is, in fact, hypothetical, conjecture, or perhaps fiction, dream, desire. The symbol "God" is an example of the Absent Referent.

Mathematics and physics

In Mathematics, the absent referent can be seen by many symbols:

• A numeral or symbol for no quantity, such as "zero", "0", or "nil",
• From set theory, the empty set, or "{}", which refers to a set with no members.
• Any symbol which is undefined, such as the number represented by "n/0" (any number divided by zero).
• Any of a number of paradoxical objects, such as the "list of all lists" from Russell's Paradox.

Physicists have named many hypothetical objects, such as certain subatomic particles, which are predicted by mathematical models but have never been observed.

Implicit vs. Explicit

Any written symbol for the Absent Referent (e.g., {}, "G-D", 0, "null", etc.) is by nature explicit. However, there is also the implicit Absent Referent, where the symbol for the missing thing is also missing. Examples:

• "wife" -- A person with self-identity, yet exists relative the "husband" (implicit absent referent)
• "pet" -- Barely a thing of its own right, a "pet" mostly exists in reference to the Owner/Master, implicitly absent referent.

See also

• Anaphora (linguistics)
• Ferdinand de Saussure
• Null subject language
• Pro-drop language

Notes

Further reading