The Loss of the Creature

Percy, Walker. "The Loss of the Creature" in The Message in the Bottle: How Queer Man Is, How Queer Language Is, And What One Has To Do With the Other. New York: Picador.

"The Loss of the Creature" is how man surrenders his sovereignty to experts. He gives the example of seeing the Grand Canyon for the first time. You cannot see it because you are seeing it through the eyes of others, and not your own, For example, you see the Grand Canyon on a tour with a tour guide. The expert is telling you what you ought to see. Another barrier is that instead of looking at the Grand Canyon, the first thing the tourist does is photograph it. Percy asks the question, how can the tourist see the Grand Canyon with fresh eyes. One way is "by leaving the beaten path" (48). Another way is there could be a disruption or a "breakdown of the symbolic machinery by which the experts present the experience" (49). Percy thinks one's sovereignty may also be "recovered in a time of national disaster" (49). One is reminded how ultimate things become real at the time of a disaster. Another example of surrendering one's sovereignty is the need for others to certify it. Instead of confronting the thing directly, the "present experience is always measured by a prototype, the 'it' of their dreams" (53). The loss of the creature occurs when "sovereignty is surrendered to a class of privileged knowers, whether these be theorists or artists" (54).

Another problem is when the object becomes captive to the theory. Percy thinks things can become invisible because of theory. We try to make the thing fit the theory. Percy argues, "The dogfish, the tree, the seashell, the American Negro, the dream, are rendered invisible by a shift of reality from concrete thing to theory which Whitehead has called the fallacy of misplaced concreteness. It is the mistaking of an idea, a principle, an abstraction for the real. As a consequence of the shift, the 'specimen' is seen as less real than the theory of the specimen" (58). Kierkegaard thought when people are "seen as a specimen of a race or species, at that very moment" they stop seeing people as individuals.