Derrida has gone the furthest in the direction of defining this level of culture though his psychotherapy of philosophy. But others have also explored it like Martin Heidegger, Michael Henry, Emmanuel Levinas, Maurice Merleau-Ponty. From those pioneers many other cultural analyses based on the level of traces have emerged. In fact, most of post-modern deconstructionist analysis attempts to elucidate this level of cultural artifacts. Once this level has been exposed then essence and existence takes on yet another meaning.
Essence becomes the hidden, never appearing enigma that distorts what does appear.
Existence becomes the trace itself rather than the signs and forms that are built up from the trace. Then out of the discontinuities between these essences there is the sudden appearance of the emergent eventity that changes everything. I call this sudden appearance of the emergent eventity out of the discontinuity between epochs the novum. Now we see how the arising of the novum creates the epochs in terms of the phenomena of emergence, the arising of the genuinely new that transforms the tradition. This subject was first adequately framed by G.H. Mead who describes the phenomena of emergence and relates it to the social.