creative writing school
Module 1: Perception & Intuition
structure
Introduction
Theory:
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Theory:
- Philosophy
- Psychology
- Erkan Özgen: Wonderland (2016)
Share your text with us
introduction
Welcome to this online class on absence.
We will not approach absence as emptiness, nor as something to repair or overcome. Absence is not outside of experience. It is already inside it. Every presence is marked by what is not there: what has left, what never arrived, what cannot be named. Absence does not appear after something disappears. It structures how things appear in the first place.
In this sense, absence is not a void. It is a pressure. It shapes perception, memory, and language. It introduces hesitation, fragmentation, repetition. It interrupts continuity. It produces form. What cannot be said does not disappear, it reorganizes how something can be said.
In this class, we will not try to explain absence or translate it into clear narratives. We will resist the impulse to fill the gap too quickly. Because filling absence often neutralizes it. It removes its force. Instead, we will stay with what does not resolve. What remains unfinished. What insists without becoming fully legible.
We will engage with Wonderland. A child attempts to recount an experience of war without language. What emerges is not a story but a sequence of gestures, repetitions, silences. The absence of words is what carries the experience. It marks the limit of language, and at the same time, it produces another form of expression.
Absence is not abstract. It is felt. In the body, as tension, as interruption, as something that cannot fully pass. Before it becomes an idea, it is already there, shaping how you perceive and how you write. This is where we begin.
We will not approach absence as emptiness, nor as something to repair or overcome. Absence is not outside of experience. It is already inside it. Every presence is marked by what is not there: what has left, what never arrived, what cannot be named. Absence does not appear after something disappears. It structures how things appear in the first place.
In this sense, absence is not a void. It is a pressure. It shapes perception, memory, and language. It introduces hesitation, fragmentation, repetition. It interrupts continuity. It produces form. What cannot be said does not disappear, it reorganizes how something can be said.
In this class, we will not try to explain absence or translate it into clear narratives. We will resist the impulse to fill the gap too quickly. Because filling absence often neutralizes it. It removes its force. Instead, we will stay with what does not resolve. What remains unfinished. What insists without becoming fully legible.
We will engage with Wonderland. A child attempts to recount an experience of war without language. What emerges is not a story but a sequence of gestures, repetitions, silences. The absence of words is what carries the experience. It marks the limit of language, and at the same time, it produces another form of expression.
Absence is not abstract. It is felt. In the body, as tension, as interruption, as something that cannot fully pass. Before it becomes an idea, it is already there, shaping how you perceive and how you write. This is where we begin.
theory
PHILOSOPHY
Absence has been approached in philosophy as something that structures how we exist, perceive, and make meaning.
With Martin Heidegger, absence enters through what he calls being-toward-death. Death is not only an event at the end of life. It is a horizon that is always already there. You live with the knowledge, often avoided, often displaced, that your time is finite. This awareness does not simply produce anxiety. It structures how you relate to time, to decisions, to meaning. What is not yet, your death, shapes what is now.
Absence, here, is not after life. It is inside it, organizing its urgency, its limits, its intensity.
With Jean-Paul Sartre, absence takes another form: nothingness. Not as emptiness, but as something that operates within existence. In nothingness, there is no given meaning, no stable foundation. What is not there, meaning, essence, purpose, is precisely what forces you to act, to choose, to construct. Absence becomes a condition of freedom. But this freedom is unstable. It exposes you to responsibility, to uncertainty, to the impossibility of relying on something fixed.
With Jacques Derrida, absence enters language itself. His notion of différance insists that meaning is never fully present. A word does not contain what it means. It refers to other words, other contexts, other absences. Meaning is always deferred, always slightly out of reach. What you read or hear is shaped as much by what is not there as by what is there. Absence becomes a condition for interpretation. Without it, language would close. With it, it remains open, unstable, multiple.
With Maurice Merleau-Ponty, absence is not only conceptual. It is perceptual. What you see is never complete. What is absent, out of frame, out of reach, no longer visible, continues to shape perception. Memory, expectation, sensation are all structured by what is not immediately given. You do not perceive isolated objects. You perceive within a field where presence and absence are constantly interacting.
Across these approaches, absence is something that:
– structures time
– produces meaning
– destabilizes language
– shapes perception
For writing, this means that what is not said is not secondary. It is active. What is missing, deferred, interrupted, unfinished, this is where the text begins to move.
With Martin Heidegger, absence enters through what he calls being-toward-death. Death is not only an event at the end of life. It is a horizon that is always already there. You live with the knowledge, often avoided, often displaced, that your time is finite. This awareness does not simply produce anxiety. It structures how you relate to time, to decisions, to meaning. What is not yet, your death, shapes what is now.
Absence, here, is not after life. It is inside it, organizing its urgency, its limits, its intensity.
With Jean-Paul Sartre, absence takes another form: nothingness. Not as emptiness, but as something that operates within existence. In nothingness, there is no given meaning, no stable foundation. What is not there, meaning, essence, purpose, is precisely what forces you to act, to choose, to construct. Absence becomes a condition of freedom. But this freedom is unstable. It exposes you to responsibility, to uncertainty, to the impossibility of relying on something fixed.
With Jacques Derrida, absence enters language itself. His notion of différance insists that meaning is never fully present. A word does not contain what it means. It refers to other words, other contexts, other absences. Meaning is always deferred, always slightly out of reach. What you read or hear is shaped as much by what is not there as by what is there. Absence becomes a condition for interpretation. Without it, language would close. With it, it remains open, unstable, multiple.
With Maurice Merleau-Ponty, absence is not only conceptual. It is perceptual. What you see is never complete. What is absent, out of frame, out of reach, no longer visible, continues to shape perception. Memory, expectation, sensation are all structured by what is not immediately given. You do not perceive isolated objects. You perceive within a field where presence and absence are constantly interacting.
Across these approaches, absence is something that:
– structures time
– produces meaning
– destabilizes language
– shapes perception
For writing, this means that what is not said is not secondary. It is active. What is missing, deferred, interrupted, unfinished, this is where the text begins to move.
PSYCHOLOGY
Absence is also what is formed very early, in relation.
With object relations theory, Melanie Klein and D. W. Winnicott, absence is not simply something that happens later in life. It begins in the first separations. The child learns, slowly, that what is not visible is not necessarily gone. This is often described as object permanence, but what is at stake is more complex: the ability to hold something internally when it is no longer present externally.
Absence here is formative.
It structures the capacity to relate, to imagine, to tolerate distance.
If this process is unstable, absence becomes difficult to bear. It is no longer a space that can be held, but something that collapses or overwhelms.
With attachment theory, John Bowlby and Mary Ainsworth, this becomes visible in another way. The presence or absence of a reliable figure shapes how absence is later experienced. If presence has been inconsistent, absence does not simply register as distance. It produces anxiety, insecurity, hyper-attention. Different attachment patterns emerge, but what they share is this: absence is not neutral. It is charged.
It affects how you wait.
How you separate.
How you relate.
With grief, absence becomes explicit. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross proposed stages, denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance, not as a fixed sequence, but as attempts to describe how absence is processed. What matters here is not the model itself, but the fact that absence is not integrated immediately. It moves. It returns. It shifts. It resists closure.
Freud, in Mourning and Melancholia, pushes this further. With Sigmund Freud, absence is not only external. What is lost can be internalized in a way that does not resolve. In melancholia, the lost object is not released. It is incorporated. The absence becomes internal conflict. Something is gone, but it continues to act from within.
Absence, here, is not visible.
It is carried.
Memory works in a similar way. What is forgotten is not simply erased. It continues to structure what is remembered. Absence appears through gaps, distortions, reconstructions. What you recall is shaped by what you cannot access. Identity is built not only from what is remembered, but also from what is missing.
With Viktor Frankl and existential psychology, absence becomes something else again. Meaning is not given. It is not guaranteed by external structures. It has to be constructed, often in conditions where something essential is missing. Frankl insists not on optimism, but on capacity: the ability to produce meaning even when absence, loss, or suffering cannot be resolved.
Across these approaches, absence operates as a condition that:
– structures early relations
– shapes emotional patterns
– returns in grief and loss
– inhabits memory
– and forces the question of meaning
With object relations theory, Melanie Klein and D. W. Winnicott, absence is not simply something that happens later in life. It begins in the first separations. The child learns, slowly, that what is not visible is not necessarily gone. This is often described as object permanence, but what is at stake is more complex: the ability to hold something internally when it is no longer present externally.
Absence here is formative.
It structures the capacity to relate, to imagine, to tolerate distance.
If this process is unstable, absence becomes difficult to bear. It is no longer a space that can be held, but something that collapses or overwhelms.
With attachment theory, John Bowlby and Mary Ainsworth, this becomes visible in another way. The presence or absence of a reliable figure shapes how absence is later experienced. If presence has been inconsistent, absence does not simply register as distance. It produces anxiety, insecurity, hyper-attention. Different attachment patterns emerge, but what they share is this: absence is not neutral. It is charged.
It affects how you wait.
How you separate.
How you relate.
With grief, absence becomes explicit. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross proposed stages, denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance, not as a fixed sequence, but as attempts to describe how absence is processed. What matters here is not the model itself, but the fact that absence is not integrated immediately. It moves. It returns. It shifts. It resists closure.
Freud, in Mourning and Melancholia, pushes this further. With Sigmund Freud, absence is not only external. What is lost can be internalized in a way that does not resolve. In melancholia, the lost object is not released. It is incorporated. The absence becomes internal conflict. Something is gone, but it continues to act from within.
Absence, here, is not visible.
It is carried.
Memory works in a similar way. What is forgotten is not simply erased. It continues to structure what is remembered. Absence appears through gaps, distortions, reconstructions. What you recall is shaped by what you cannot access. Identity is built not only from what is remembered, but also from what is missing.
With Viktor Frankl and existential psychology, absence becomes something else again. Meaning is not given. It is not guaranteed by external structures. It has to be constructed, often in conditions where something essential is missing. Frankl insists not on optimism, but on capacity: the ability to produce meaning even when absence, loss, or suffering cannot be resolved.
Across these approaches, absence operates as a condition that:
– structures early relations
– shapes emotional patterns
– returns in grief and loss
– inhabits memory
– and forces the question of meaning
inspiration
“Wonderland” (2016) by Erkan Özgen does not represent absence. It places you in front of what cannot be carried by language. A child stands in front of the camera. He tries to recount what he has lived through. War. Violence. Displacement. But there are no words. What appears instead are gestures. Repetitions. Sounds that do not become speech. Movements that attempt to hold something and fail to stabilize it.
The absence here is not only what has been lost, family, home, safety. It is also the absence of language itself. Something happened that cannot be translated.
Or not yet. Or not in this form. The body takes over.
Not as expression, but as necessity. What you see is not a narrative of trauma. It is the impossibility of narrating it. Naming it. Voicing it. This is where the work becomes precise. Silence here is saturated. The gestures are attempts. Attempts to grasp, to show, to transmit something that exceeds what can be said.
Absence operates on multiple levels:
– the absence of a stable environment
– the absence of those who are no longer there
– the absence of language to structure the experience
– the absence of distance that would allow reflection
And yet, something insists. The child continues. Repeats. Returns to the same movements.
As if meaning could emerge through persistence.
As if the body could find a way where language cannot.
For the viewer, there is no resolution. You are placed in front of something you cannot fully access. You cannot complete the story. You cannot translate it into coherence. And this is exactly where the work holds.
Because absence here is not something to be filled.
It is something that marks the limit. Not everything can be said. Not everything should be translated into language.
For writing, this is a position. To recognize where language fails. To not rush to replace it. To allow fragmentation, silence to carry what cannot be resolved. As precision.
The absence here is not only what has been lost, family, home, safety. It is also the absence of language itself. Something happened that cannot be translated.
Or not yet. Or not in this form. The body takes over.
Not as expression, but as necessity. What you see is not a narrative of trauma. It is the impossibility of narrating it. Naming it. Voicing it. This is where the work becomes precise. Silence here is saturated. The gestures are attempts. Attempts to grasp, to show, to transmit something that exceeds what can be said.
Absence operates on multiple levels:
– the absence of a stable environment
– the absence of those who are no longer there
– the absence of language to structure the experience
– the absence of distance that would allow reflection
And yet, something insists. The child continues. Repeats. Returns to the same movements.
As if meaning could emerge through persistence.
As if the body could find a way where language cannot.
For the viewer, there is no resolution. You are placed in front of something you cannot fully access. You cannot complete the story. You cannot translate it into coherence. And this is exactly where the work holds.
Because absence here is not something to be filled.
It is something that marks the limit. Not everything can be said. Not everything should be translated into language.
For writing, this is a position. To recognize where language fails. To not rush to replace it. To allow fragmentation, silence to carry what cannot be resolved. As precision.
creative exercise
This exercise does not begin with a story.
It begins where something cannot be told.
Step 1 — Choose the edge
Think of an experience, image, or situation that feels difficult to put into words.
Not necessarily dramatic. But resistant.
It could be:
– something you remember incompletely
– something you never spoke about
– something you don’t fully understand
Do not try to clarify it.
Stay with its opacity.
Step 2 — Remove language (partially)
Begin writing, but restrict yourself:
– avoid explanation
– avoid full sentences at first
– avoid naming emotions directly
Let the text emerge through:
– fragments
– gestures (described or implied)
– sounds, repetitions, broken syntax
Write as if language is not fully available to you.
Step 3 — Let the body speak
Introduce the body.
Not as description, but as action:
– hands doing something
– breath changing
– a movement that repeats
– a physical reaction that doesn’t resolve
Let the body carry what cannot be said.
Step 4 — Stay incomplete
Do not fill the gap(s). Do not resolve the text.
Just let it end.
Constraints
– allow silence inside the text
It begins where something cannot be told.
Step 1 — Choose the edge
Think of an experience, image, or situation that feels difficult to put into words.
Not necessarily dramatic. But resistant.
It could be:
– something you remember incompletely
– something you never spoke about
– something you don’t fully understand
Do not try to clarify it.
Stay with its opacity.
Step 2 — Remove language (partially)
Begin writing, but restrict yourself:
– avoid explanation
– avoid full sentences at first
– avoid naming emotions directly
Let the text emerge through:
– fragments
– gestures (described or implied)
– sounds, repetitions, broken syntax
Write as if language is not fully available to you.
Step 3 — Let the body speak
Introduce the body.
Not as description, but as action:
– hands doing something
– breath changing
– a movement that repeats
– a physical reaction that doesn’t resolve
Let the body carry what cannot be said.
Step 4 — Stay incomplete
Do not fill the gap(s). Do not resolve the text.
Just let it end.
Constraints
– allow silence inside the text
Photo: Erkan Özgen's "Wonderland"