The phrase "a mere absence" is correct and usable in written English.
It can be used to describe something that is simply the lack of something else, often implying that the absence is not significant or noteworthy.
Example: "What I felt was not sadness, but rather a mere absence of joy in my life."
Alternatives: "just a lack" or "only an absence".
It is not a mere absence of colour; it is a shining and affirmative thing, as fierce as red, as definite as black. . . .
It's the noise that transforms the contemplative silence — that raises it from a mere absence of talk or lack of sound to a positive and exalted state of imagination.
India says it wants more than a mere absence of terror, though: the dismantling of the terrorists' camps and of the "infrastructure" behind them (which sounds like a demand for the abolition of the ISI), and the handing over of 20 wanted terrorists.
Space is a mere absence of entity.
Rather than a mere absence of being, meaning, or function, absolute nothingness is active and creative in forming the actual world; and it manifests or awakens to itself through self-awareness.
"Health", according to modern concepts, and in accordance with the age old Hindu concept, goes beyond a mere absence of disease.
(In general, it seems that we should explicate identity confusions in terms of the active disbelieving of a proposition as opposed to the mere absence of a positive belief).
However, it should be underlined that the mere absence of a given genetic abnormality may simply reflect a technical failure.
The new study, published in The Annals of Family Medicine, reports, however, that the mere absence of a high school diploma appears to be an independent risk factor for heart disease mortality.
2d at 1340-41 ("Contoary to Defendants' argument, the mere absence of a statistically significant increase in share price in response to fraudulent information does not 'sever the link' between the material misstatements and the price of the stock.
And by the way, if you are interested to know why, in Africa, almost all girls drop out of education at puberty, one reason is the lack of sanitary provision – the mere absence of a circle of sticks for privacy.
