ABSTRACT
This chapter draws on accounts of self-integration provided by al-Jahiz and Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ to show that, in the wine poem, pleasure arises from unraveling the discursive structure of normative selfhood. It argues that the wine poem, through its description of wine, identifies the pleasure granted by wine through self-dissolution, with the spiritual bliss promised by normative discourses as the result of moral perfection. The chapter shows how the logic of the wine poem creates an ironic perspective that lays bare the hierarchy of virtue and pleasure implicit in normative selfhood. Wine poems often end with a sex scene, usually of a homoerotic variety. The drinking of wine is the means to attaining this privileged form of pleasure, which serves as the culmination of self-dissolution. The wine poem exposes the transgressive nature of this act by casting the deflowering of the virgin bride—that is, the perforation of the wine cask—as a blood sacrifice.
