The Absent Referent

We really have no idea
How powerful apathy is—
How cultivating the silence
Of the absent referent
To ease our consciences
In our lives of luxury
Murders the innocence
Of all our landscapes.


“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.” Carol J Adams, The Sexual Politics of Meat: A Feminist-Vegetarian Critical Theory (1990).