1 The Vanishing Point

Imagine a vast perspective drawing — lines stretching into the distance, converging toward a single vanishing point. Every stroke depends on that point for coherence, yet the point itself does not exist on the paper. It is nowhere, and yet everything is organised around it.

In this thought experiment, meaning itself depends on such vanishing points: implicit centres that cannot be grasped directly, only inferred through the alignments they generate. The system coheres not because the point is present, but precisely because it is absent — a horizon of reference that guides without ever appearing.

The paradox: meaning organises itself around what cannot be construed. The absent centre gives shape to what is actualised, while itself remaining structurally inaccessible.

This pushes us to see that:

• Every act of construal invokes a horizon that exceeds it.

• Absence is not a lack but an organising principle.

• The ungraspable is not outside meaning, but the condition of its form.

Philosophical stakes:

• Is every system of meaning structured by what it cannot contain?

• Do we misrecognise coherence as presence, when it is in fact an effect of absence?

• Might the ‘beyond’ of meaning not be transcendence, but the very geometry of construal?