| Sumario: | This scene conjures a paradox that structures much of how institutional elder care unfolds - that care actions are I done to i someone, in sometimes emotionally and physically invasive ways, and yet such actions are often enveloped in gentleness. Boldly, Dufourmantelle says the constitution of gentleness or attention to it in these moments reveals "a higher degree of compassion than simple care" (Dufourmantelle [4]: 13). Attending to gentleness as something different than care may also help us unsettle and expand prevailing notions of care, an aim I gesture to in a few brief examples from South Africa. Approaching it as something different from care asks us to newly speculate on the limits of health, medicine, life, and death, and to consider how care is enacted and emplaced through different kinds of forces.
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