We share reality through common signs. There can be no speech that does not bind the speaker and the person spoken to. We are not beings who 'use' symbols, but beings who are constituted by their use. While signification makes experience become itself, there is an excess meaning to being, what phenomenology calls the noema , which excess escapes articulation even as it is shaped by it, and so there is always an almost-said, a demand for metaphor, image, narrative, nuance, polysemy. All consciousness is consciousness of .
Intentionality is at the heart of knowing.
Consequently there is an intentional structure in textuality and expression, in self-knowledge and in knowledge of others. Self-understanding is a cultural act, and culture is a personal act. Thus it must be said, with equal force, that reflection is nothing without the mediation of signs and works, and that explanation is nothing if it is not incorporated as an intermediary state in the process of self-understanding. The focus of subjectivity is a distorting mirror. The self-awareness of the individual is only a flickering in the closed circuits of historical life.