"Animalist perception: it's a radically new topic, carved out of existing theoretical literature. Donald Wesling has chosen to write on difficult philosophers, and he gives to them clever and understandable readings. He brings together a tradition out of scattered writings. He synthesizes an array of perspectives. Last not least, his titles and subtitles are always witty." (Enikö Bollobás, Professor of American Studies, Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest) "Animalist perception: it's a radically new topic, carved out of existing theoretical literature. Donald Wesling has chosen to write on difficult philosophers, and he gives to them clever and understandable readings. He brings together a tradition out of scattered writings.

He synthesizes an array of perspectives. Last not least, his titles and subtitles are always witty." (Enikö Bollobás, Professor of American Studies, Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest)"The most challenging companion animals are microbes (by billions inside us) and (symbolically) the truly wild animals: tapeworms, wolverines, head lice, krill, rattlesnakes. The idea that the megafauna are our animal companions, when the biomass is practically entirely bacteria, seems spent. What I want to read is a radical animal argument bound to perception and feeling--Donald Wesling's project. Is 'animal' better than Wesling's 'animalist' as either/both adjective/noun? It felt good to use two sentences back. What would Derrida say? For then the human being wouldn't have to be a human being, if it ever could, although it is an animal." (John Granger, Lecturer in Literature, University of California, San Diego, USA) "The book puts perception at the heart of thinking the trio: animality, reading, writing.

It extends animal studies by focusing on the phenomenology of perception as event and process in literary and philosophical texts. It discovers and develops a notion of 'animalist' thinking and gives examples and demonstrations of how one might read in that tradition. It insists on and clarifies links between motion, sense, feeling, thought and writing. It's [also] nicely-written, zingy but serious. This will be of interest for years to come as a substantial work of thinking." (Sarah Wood, author of Without Mastery: Reading and Other Forces (2014)).