tend

Let us not play with words—ever. Let us not place any bets on the homonymy, in French, between tendre and tendre, on the relations between, on the one hand, the immense semantic network and all the properly intentional senses of the verb tendre: in the dominant tradition in French, it connotes rather oriented activities, perhaps even virility (Latin, tendere, French, tendre: to tend, to hold out, to tender, to extend, to stretch, to lay out, to set up [dresser] , to hold out one's hand or to set up a trap and attend to it, to give or to ensnare, to orient oneself toward, to intend to, intentionally to seek, and so forth); and on the other hand, the instance of the attribute tendre: the latter often connotes fragility, delicacy, a rather passive vulnerability that is nonintentional, exposed, and rather childlike or feminine in the same dominant tradition of its privileged figures. Thus, in extending privileges to the caress, Levinas no doubt put the accent upon the tender of the [feminine] Beloved. But in opening it up onto peace (an impossible peace, at any rate-beyond the possible), he also implied the gift or offering of that which tends or extends, or tends to hold out to the other. With the chance of quasi-homonymy, the haunting of the tender comes back, in an essential, irreducible, and necessary fashion, to visit the other. The other, the tender—extend her, extend him. The proof of the tender is only in tending.

Without any play on words, ever, it would therefore be necessary to extend an ear and tenderly attend to these words—tender, tend, extend.

What does this say? To extend is to offer, or give; to give what is given without giving up, which is to say without exchange or waiting that the other returns it-or give (him- or herself) up. Tender it. Attendant upon tender, "Tiens!" can be heard. "Take!" Not "I give you" (a phrase made obscene by its assumed certainty and the recognition that it seems to expect), but "take," "receive," "accept," not from me, precisely, since recognition is made a party to this, as is the propriety of the proper, and economics, but "take," "accept," from whom one doesn't know, from "God" knows whom. From "God," perhaps, from "God knows who."

Let us then repeat the question: what is one doing when one is holding out to the other something that must not come from oneself, that must not belong to who is extending it, and saying "Tiens!" in French, and only in French, thus in a language, which is to say something that in principle cannot be touched? Literally, in saying "Tiens!" (as I would like to do here), one proposes that the other touch (literally or figuratively, it's always the same oscillation, and toucher de l'argent, "to touch money"—payment, profit, or capital gain—is the popular idiom), that the other grasp, or seize, or get a grip on him- or herself, but also, in receiving and accepting it, that the other keep what one extends to him or her. Saying "Tiens!," signifying "Tiens!" means holding out or extending, and giving to "touch." One is suggesting that the other take the gift of an offering for example, and receive and accept it, and thus touch it by taking it on, by taking it in him- or herself, by keeping it in or near oneself—as nearly as possible, in oneself or within reach of the hand. Touch, more than sight or hearing, gives nearness, proximity—it gives nearby. And if the two other senses, tasting and smelling, do this also, it is no doubt because of their affinity with touching, because they partake in it or lie near it, precisely, near the sense of nearness, proximity. In this regard, is it ever possible to dissociate the "near," the "proximate" [proche] from the "proper," the "propriate" [propre]? The proximate, the proper, and the present—the presence of the present? We can imagine all the consequences if this were impossible. This question will no longer leave us, even if it is in silence that we leave it to do its work. In it, the shares and dividing lines are announced, even if they cannot always be decided....

Jacques Derrida, On Touching—Jean-Luc Nancy

Eventually, Ertz and I found an isolated upland, north of the Jarbidge, where there had been limited grazing. The air was perfumed with the sharp, cool sweetness of sage, and with blooming silver lupine that smelled like orange blossom and honeysuckle. There were native bunchgrasses in profusion — Idaho fescue, bluebunch wheat, poia. We found bitterroot and bitterbrush, and phlox that flowered blue and pink and white, and the deep-purple flowers of larkspur, a plant hated by cattlemen but beloved by Ertz because it causes asphyxiation in cows and sheep. We saw wild onion and penstemon and mint and rabbitbrush and wild rose and peonies and chokecherries, which flowered in cream-colored, finger-length bunches. Bluebirds perched in the branches of a mountain mahogany, sang, and flew away. For a few minutes, we stood among the snowberry and yarrow and desert dandelions whose seeds floated before our eyes as the breeze took them.

Christopher Ketcham, "The Great Republican Land Heist"