Absent Referent (sometimes Missing Referent, or Missing Antecedent) is a concept from linguistics, and is the condition of a sign which has an empty, absent, non-existent, paradoxical, hypothetical, supernatural, or undefined referent.
There are many examples of this from such diverse realms as mathematics and physics to philosophy and religion.
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Many simple words (linguistic signs) in everyday usage refer to no actual object, and thus are examples of the absent referent:
While seemingly trivial, the notion of nothingness has been studied by philosophers for many years.[1]
English and other languages use pronouns as an indirect referent or antecedent to a person, place, or object. However, sometimes this referent is missing or absent,[2] such as in the following:
In American Sign Language, there is a notion of a space present referent and a space absent referent.[3] 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.
Generally, a written symbol or spoken word is considered the sign, however, a cluster of words can also be considered signs with a referent idea. However, not every combination of words have 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.
The general case of the fictional character can be considered an example of the absent referent which can convey important cultural information. Gottlob Frege wrote about the non-equivalence between meaning and reference. Words can often be meaningful without having a referent. Consider all the works about fictional characters from literature and mythology which conveys important cultural or historical information (e.g., Sherlock Holmes, King Arthur, Ishmael), as examples of this. An analysis of 18th century writing said "In Locke, the mind is a storehouse of absent referents."[4] The term has been used in analyzing the work of William Faulkner,[5] Walt Whitman,[6] and Ernest Hemingway[7] as well as the films of Jean-Luc Godard[8] and Alfred Hitchcock.[9]
While many people do not question the existence of the Divine, arguably no person has seen God directly. The agnostic position is that a supernatural God is, by definition, beyond the natural world and our ability to perceive with our senses. Thus, the signifer "God" can be considered to have a referent which cannot be directly experienced.
It is common for Judaism and some other religions substitute the symbol "G-d" for the written name of the Divine. While defacing, destroying, discarding, or writing the name of God is sinful, presumably doing the same to a symbol which represents the name of God is permissible. Thus, G-d can be considered an example of the absent referent with double indirection.
In Mathematics, the absent referent can be seen by many symbols:
Practitioners of modern physics have named many hypothetical objects (such as certain subatomic particles, which are predicted by mathematical models, but which have never been observed.
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 jargon, and is usually associated with the political Left.
For example, in a paper entitled The Sexual Politics of Sneakers: "Common Ground" and Absent-Referent Stories in the Nike Debate[10] "the author concludes that there is an absent referent spoken about but missing from the debate" between Nike and its critics: "namely, the workers themselves." The underlying idea here would appear to be that representatives of the workers should have input in discussions between the Nike corporation and Western critics of its labor practices. The condition of being "spoken about but being missing from the debate" appears to be the gist of this use of the words absent referent. The image is that of two people talking about a third person who is standing by without being consulted.
The absent referent was written about by vegan feminist Carol Adams[11] to explain a psycho-social detachment which occurs in people who eat meat between the consumer and the Other. There is an implicit presumption that if people had a connection to the animal which was the source of the food, or the violence involved in the slaughter, much less meat eating would occur.
Carol Adams writes of the history of the idea:
Tracey Smith's use of the term "absent referent" has been widely cited and discussed in scholarly journals.[12][13][14][15][16][17]
William M 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."[18]