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159 F i v e Keep Everything in Sight at the Same Time Tender Buttons. —Gertrude Stein Words are like tender buttons. They have official uses, well-known uses. They are like mother’s milk to us. Are my male nipples, barely rising from my flat chest, therefore useless? Atavistic remnants of some Aristophanic hermaphroditism? We know better. Many uses. Many pleasures. Words too. Many uses. Many pleasures. Pleasures and powers that come with the sensuality of their sounds, the mingling of their meanings, the look of their letters. Tender senses textured. Everything in sight at the same time (Deleuze and Guattari [1980] 1987, 35). Love and death make us all poets. Seeking the power of words, we fold their sounds into their significations. There is always more. By multiplying, intensifying. Linguistic sense sensualized. “Concept responding to concept the way passionate flesh congests, every note a nipple on the breast” (Gass [1976] 1991, 57). Tender words. And the senses discover their sensuality, redeem themselves. Come alive. Again. Everything in sight at the same time. An erotics of sense and sensation. Come becoming. Come. Yes. in the parched mouths of philosophers desire becomes want ...

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