JCNT - May 2025 Release - Full Release - Flipbook - Page 16
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experiences (p. 37). As an artist, what I've viewed as a contrast between
background and foreground, absence and presence, become opportunities in
narrative therapy to bring forward less dominant meanings. An example of the
absent but implicit is evident in my client Ivy's statement, "I learned how I liked to
be treated based on how I don't like being treated." In this case, Ivy and I had a
rich conversation about the specific knowledge they gained while, unfortunately,
experiencing acute trauma. In another example, a client, Liam, and I made
meaning by looking at a bully's taunts in contrast to what he implicitly knew about
themselves. Liam described having "lost himself" because of a bully's
misrepresentation, yet he actively defended himself based on an implicit sense of
who he knew himself to be. I wondered aloud about Liam's agency and strength
in his expressed responses.
However, the danger of the absent but implicit is that what we see as present
becomes the origin of what we see as missing. Foucault (1966/1970) describes
the tendency of classical science toward isomorphic systems, ones where we
make analogies between similar forms. These knowledge spaces depend on
proximity and conceptual similarities, pointing to fixed geographies rather than
ongoing deliberation processes. As is written in the foreword of The Order of
Things, they "ignore the extreme diversity of the objects under consideration" (p.
xi). Deleuze (1994) writes of representation that "& difference is subordinated by
the thinking subject to the identity of the concept&" (p. 266). Although useful, the
absent but implicit may lure us towards alternatives that depend on resemblance,
binary pairings, or essentialist conclusions (May, 2021). Examples of these readymade associations might include "being stuck" and "getting unstuck" or "conflict"
and "harmony." The absent but implicit is at risk of inverting problems to discover
seemingly implicit solutions based on the identity of the original idea or
"triggering presuppositions" that lead the reader to comply with and perform
insidious assumptions (Bruner, 1986, pp. 27-28).
I want to share an addition to the absent but implicit that I think of as the absent
but illicit. We can make space for forbidden, less customary sense-making that
escapes our common associations and analogous ideas. The absent but illicit
invites less familiar, less legitimized options that don't belong to the set and that
liberate us from implicit meaning-making. To overthrow problems or create
Breaking the Frame: Aesthetic Encounters with Narrative Practices – Part Two
Journal of Contemporary Narrative Therapy, May 2025 Release, p. 5-28.
www.journalnft.com
