The observation and interpretation of others is always also a means of leading to the observation of the self; true anthropological knowledge . . . can only become worthy of being called knowledge when this alternating process of mutual interpretation between subjects has run its course. Numerous complications arise, because the observing subject is no more than the observed, and each time the observer actually succeeds in interpreting his subject he changes it, and changes it all the more his observation comes closer to the truth. But every change of the observed subject requires a subsequent change in the observer and the oscillating process seems to be endless. Worse, as the oscillating process gains intensity and truth, it becomes less and less clear who is in fact doing the observing and who is being observed. Both parties fuse into a single subject as the original distance between them disappears.

Paul de Man, Blindness and Insight