Abstract

This literary study focuses on the theoretical stance of Giles Deleuze and Félix Guattari about the significance of literature as a “machine of expression.” They posit that literature creates affects and percepts. Affect, they hold, is not a personal feeling or characteristic; rather, it is the internal stimuli or desiring-machine that desiring-production (or productive unconscious) produces. Desire is, therefore, taken as the productive force of life. It produces persons, classes, and interest from coded affects, whereas percept refers to the writing style of an author. They posit that style is not representation or depiction, but it is the writer’s viewpoint that evolves over time. The study mobilizes feelings, particularly grief, disgust, and loss in Muhammad Hanif’s (2018) novel Red Birds to study the problems and suffering of victims of war, particularly the effects/affects of war on the lives of missing persons’ families. The focus on feelings/emotions is treated as a diagnostic tool rather than as a strategic tool. The “productive desire” is a powerful agency or capacity of mind, which triggers the conditions of the subject “I.” The study employs Deleuze’s and Guattari’s critical methodology of schizoanalysis and focuses on central concepts of “the body without organs” (desire in its free state) and “desiring-machine” (internal stimuli, affects) for a qualitative analysis of the novel. This research aims to deepen our understanding of how emotions operate in forming and shaping human behaviors.