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Varieties of Absence

Separation anxiety is a stark experience that the infant can not avoid. His nursing mother away at work is no longer present for him. His language undeveloped and with no sense of the future, he exists only in the immediate present. He notes her empty place, the not-mother, and both panics and mourns his lost source of affection and nourishment.

The cure is in the acceptance of the near future when the temporary separation is resolved. The absent one returns. This knowledge is cultural, conceptual. It is a socio-cultural overlay on a bio-social moment.

The concrete reality is whole like the cooked scrambled egg. On the abstract conceptual side it is divided into the biological egg cracked open and its contents fried as a cultural act A real event described by two separate abstract conceptual systems. An exact unity of the concrete and the concept can only be approached. The concept always falls short. But we can reach a point where we are close enough for our purpose.

With the ordinary, garden variety absence we have a panel of acceptable explanatory concepts: illness, lethargy, conflicting priorities, vacation, hooky. These are known patterns. The colleagues of a no-show will assume a conventional reason and await more information. Any twitch of visceral response is culturally assuaged.

When, and if, the missing one finally arrives a series of normal, conventional sanctions may be applied: the laughter and ragging of his associates, a warning from the boss, loss of pay, a scolding by teacher, and so on. An absence cycle closed.

The case of the absent person has consequences for his group. Most obviously in a work group. When a member of a string quartet is delayed in a traffic jam and misses a concert his group can not make the expected music. Even if a substitute performer is found his lack of practice with the others, his unique musical sensibility, will produce a different musical outcome.

For groups of friends and domestic groups with an emphasis on emotional relationship the loss of a member is in the disconnect itself.

But then there are the more unusual absences, sometimes extraordinary, with commensurate responses requiring another suite of cultural possibilities.

A second group intervenes, acts to assure that a target person will not make his appointed rounds. A kidnapping, an arrest, a detention, a misdirection breaks in on his routine. Any anxiety among his associates is finally justified.

The act against him is really an act of one group against another, an act of conflict. The missing one is merely a pawn. He is kidnapped by a criminal gang, for example, and held for ransom to be paid by his family, friends, business firm.

A scenario pattern of the missing can generate a large demographic statistic. In the case of those who disappeared in Argentina in the period 1975 through 1983 an estimated 30,000 persons were lost, most tortured and killed by the small secret groups of police and military acting surreptitiously but under the cover of the military regime then in power. There was the usual political right versus left form, here exaggerated and grotesque. The supporters of the military dictatorship used terror to keep all the people leaning toward a reintroduction of democratic legitimacy quiescent.

With conversion, an absence is usually a voluntary act, a shift of allegiance, but coercion and seduction can play a part. One adopting a new ideology or religion drops away from his former companions. Faith and absence in this enactment are inseparable. The setting is the contentious relationship of the groups.

There are also instances of expulsion. The group forces member(s) out In the biblical story of Joseph and his brothers, the principal is sold into bondage in Egypt by his siblings because he is their father’s favorite. The Cuban Revolution expelled some of its citizens, allowed thousands of others to migrate, and others risked the jump to Florida on their own. Masses of people left the country. This push out resolves the group’s internal contention. Again, the missing and the reordering of the group are linked.

Divorce or complete separation of mates approaches the mutual expulsion model. With a small group the change in its ordering following absence is drastic if not catastrophic.

Fraud or suspicion of fraud may be involved in the healing following return. The lost one comes back after considerable time away. Is it the same person? Claim the identity and the inheritance follows. Peasant uprisings in the medieval world often claimed to represent the true lost monarch.

Some of the lost, the Missing-in-Action, leave a heightened stretched out suffering for those left behind. There is some possibility that the lost one is dead but without definite information including recovery of the remains the mourners can have no closure. The possibility of survival is still there. That is the final organizational rub. The empty place. The specific unique person who is not there. It becomes part of the ordering of the surviving group.

Still a lot of absences simply mean that a relationship is over. Goodbye and good luck. Be seeing you. And they never contact or see each other again.

Of course, the supposed missing, unless they are dead or suffering memory loss, know pretty well where they are. For them your whereabouts is the problematic. He who acts the objective observer is delusional since he is inevitably part of the process.

Consider. Who is wondering where you are?

All the empty places like so many discarded carapaces.

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Varieties of Absence

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