Metabolism of Meaning: Circulations, Constraints, and the Reflexive Field: 2 Construal Metabolism: How Meaning Sustains Itself

If Part 1 positioned metabolism as a lens for understanding potential and actualisation, we now turn to the mechanics of that metabolism — the circulatory processes through which meaning sustains itself at the level of individual construal. Every act of language, whether a word, gesture, or sentence, is a metabolic pulse, simultaneously consuming, transforming, and regenerating the field of potential.

The Micro-scale of Circulation

Consider a single utterance: it is not a static container of meaning but a dynamic event. It draws from systemic potential, actualises a pattern, and feeds back into the system, altering the field of future possibilities. This process is reflexive: the act of construal reshapes both the environment and the system from which it emerged. Each text is thus both consumer and producer, both metabolism and membrane.

Micro-level metabolism operates through three interrelated functions:

1. Differentiation – The act of construal distinguishes some relations as foreground, others as background. It cuts potential into determinate patterns.

2. Stabilisation – Repetition, convention, and alignment ensure that certain pathways of potential remain viable across multiple acts.

3. Redistribution – Construal transforms surplus potential into new possibilities, spreading energy through the semiotic field and sustaining the system’s continuity.

In this light, grammar, vocabulary, and discourse structures are not inert tools; they are channels for metabolic flow, regulating the circulation of meaning and coordinating alignment across scales.

Feedback Loops and Reflexive Alignment

Every act of construal participates in feedback loops. A phrase that resonates, a gesture that aligns, a story that mobilises attention — these metabolic outputs feed back into the system, modifying the likelihood of future actualisations. Misalignments or breakdowns in communication represent local metabolic disruptions, requiring adjustments in subsequent construals. Language, at this scale, is a self-regulating metabolic network, constantly tuning its circulatory pathways to maintain coherence and viability.

Ethics at the Micro-scale

Micro-level metabolism is also ethical metabolism. Each construal carries consequences for the field: it can nourish diversity, reinforce resilience, or, conversely, constrict potential and create systemic fragility. To act responsibly at this scale is to attend to the flow of potential, shaping pathways that allow meaning to circulate, evolve, and co-actualise with other semiotic and material processes.

From Individual to Collective Metabolism

Individual acts of construal do not exist in isolation. Their metabolic pulses reverberate through communities, institutions, and material environments. The micro-scale is thus inseparable from the meso-scale: small circulations of meaning aggregate into collective metabolic patterns, sustaining cultures, stabilising institutions, and guiding ecosocial processes.

In the next post, we will zoom further outward, tracing metabolic networks at the meso-level, exploring how communities and institutions regulate, amplify, and constrain the flows of meaning that sustain relational potential.