Heterotopia and the Wine Poem in Early Islamic Culture Author(s): Yaseen Noorani Reviewed work(s): Source: International

Journal of Middle East Studies, Vol. 36, No. 3 (Aug., 2004), pp. 345-366 Published by: Cambridge University Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3879879 . Accessed: 05/05/2012 13:47
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Int. J. Middle East Stud.36 (2004), 345-366. Printed in the UnitedStates of America DOI: 10.1017.S0020743804363014

YaseenNoorani

AND THE WINE POEM HETEROTOPIA ISLAMIC CULTURE

IN EARLY

The 11th-centuryAndalusian author Ibn Hazm, in his treatise on love entitled Tawq al-Hamama (Ring of the Dove), strikes on a vivid analogy for illustratingthe nature of the self and its propensity for wrongdoing: "[t]he righteous man and woman are like a fire concealed within ashes that doesn't burn anyone nearby unless stirred,but the unrighteousare like a blazing fire that burns up everything."'This fire that must be kept tightly enclosed is the lower self, the inner repositoryof insatiable desire. To release the fire is to allow an immediate and untrammeledgratificationof desire that Ibn would quickly consume the self and its surroundings. Hazm's analogy derives from the normativediscourse pioneered more than two centuriesearlierby Ibn al-Muqaffa' (d. 757) and al-Jahiz (d. 868), who, drawing on a variety of sources, developed an consonantwith the courtlycultureof theirtime. Their accountof moral self-integration account complements the contemporarycourtly panegyric poetry, which depicted the caliph and other figures of authorityas embodimentsof the normativeideal, enjoying and conferringa utopian state of bliss. In the same period, the poet Abu Nuwas (d. c. 814) developed a body of wine poetry that parodies the ideal of self-integrationin a way that reveals the symbolic operationsat work within it.2 Abu Nuwas's wine poems take advantageof the apparentcontradictionat the heart of normativediscourse: the blissful conditionof power and pleasuresoughtby the desiring self can be realizedonly throughmoral self-integration,which is the suppressionof the desiring self. In other words, one must masterone's insatiabledesire by adheringto moralnormsbecause this is precisely the way, ultimately,to gratify desire eternally and absolutely.The goal of self-integration,whetherconceived of as an ideal psychic state, a utopian community, or a condition in the afterlife, is thus the same boundless conflagrationof the sinner picturedby Ibn Hazm, except thatit perfects the self instead of destroyingit. Normativeselfhood-the conceptionof the self thatgives rise to the normativeimperative of self-mastery-appears then to be animatedby a productiveparadox.I will argue that the mannerin which Abu Nuwas's wine poetry exposes and exploits this paradox reveals features of normativeselfhood ordinarilyhidden from view. Specifically, Abu Nuwas's wine poetry shows thatthe conception of the self on which moral normativity was based posits a social hierarchyin which those capable of moral self-integration legitimatelymonopolize power as well as pleasure.In otherwords, the elite excesses of enjoyment and violence so amply representedin early Islamic literatureare rooted in
Islamic and Middle East Studies, University of Edinburgh, YaseenNoorani is Lecturerin Arabic Literature, EH8 9LW,United Kingdom;e-mail: y.noorani@ed.ac.uk. Edinburgh
? 2004 Cambridge University Press 0020-7438/04 $12.00

346 YaseenNoorani the same moral orderthat allies political dominancewith virtue. Abu Nuwas's poems illuminate the inner workings of the socio-moral hierarchythrough the counter-logic thatthey embody.Whereasthe normativediscoursesdesignatea process of sublimation in which desire is to be transformedinto virtue, Abu Nuwas's wine poems invertthis process in a way thatfrees the desirelocked withinvirtue.They depict a process in which desire is producedand gratifiedthroughthe dissolution of the morally integratedself. They identify the sensationsof power andpleasureexperiencedthroughself-dissolution with the spiritualbliss promised by self-mastery.Normative discourse relies on both the opposition and equivalence of desire and virtue. Throughthe parodic inversionof this discourse,Abu Nuwas's wine poems show thatthe conception of the self on which normativityis based always exceeds the boundariesof normativity.From this region of excess, the wine poem creates an ironic perspectiveon normativitygeneratedfrom within normativityitself. The wine poem thereby exhibits and makes merry with the undersideof normativity, limits and contradictions the that constituteit.3 its logic of self-dissolution,Abu Nuwas'swine poetryevokes a stateof fusion Through with fate, indistinguishable, for its transience,from the utopianmasteryof fate that but crowns panegyricpoetry.Herein lies the wine poem's heterotopia,its representation of a utopianbliss that countersand mocks the values embodied in the normativeutopia.4 The wine poem's heterotopiais not a substitutefor normativity a derivativeof it. It is but a liminal state, a negationor transgressionof everydaynorms that enables contact with achieved throughtemporary dangerousand powerfulforces.5 It is a self-transcendence violation of the categories and boundariesof the self's identity. All of the negation, and transgression, violationtake place, however,on discursiveand symbolic levels. The wine poem dissolves a representation the self by means of its rhetoricalinversionof of normativediscourseand panegyricpoetry.In the same manner,the practicesand places the wine poem depicts are not intrinsicallytransgressive; they are renderedthus by the wine poem's representation them as the negationof moralnorms. In other words,the of wine poem is a counter-genre thatendows its contentwith a transgressive,heterotopian the significanceby embodyingthereinits logic of negation.Therefore,in understanding relationshipthe wine poem createsbetween the practicesit celebratesand moralnorms, we also understand relationshipthat the wine poem creates between itself and the the discourses it parodies.Such an understanding illuminatesthe symbolic significanceof the numerous"transgressive" literaryforms that populateearly Islamic culture.6Like the wine poem's heterotopia,they are implied-in some sense, required-by normative this courtly culture. Abu Nuwas's version of the wine poem is key to understanding relationship,because it goes furthest in inverting the structuresof panegyric poetry and normativevirtue. It exploits the paradoximplicit within normativeselfhood most ruthlesslyand makes the most of the euphoricescape from selfhood that ensues. As an aestheticundoingof the normativepictureof the self, the wine poem reachesits pinnacle with Abu Nuwas. His poetryfocuses on the dangerouscontradiction constitutesthe that normativeself and managesit by makingan aestheticgame of it. Yet the dangerremains liberationcultivatesthe dangereven while intact,for the wine poem's thrillof temporary making light of it.7 The analysis that follows is divided into three sections. The first section draws on accounts of self-integrationprovidedby al-Jahiz and Ibn al-Muqaffa'to show that, in the wine poem, pleasure arises from unravelingthe discursive structureof normative

Heterotopiaand the WinePoem 347 selfhood. In the second section, I argue that the wine poem, throughits descriptionof wine, identifies the pleasuregrantedby wine throughself-dissolution,with the spiritual bliss promised by normative discourses as the result of moral perfection. The third section shows how the logic of the wine poem creates an ironic perspectivethat lays barethe hierarchyof virtue and pleasureimplicit in normativeselfhood.
DISSOLVING THE RATIONAL SELF

The overarchingthematic of self-dissolution in the wine poem lies in the suspension of rational self-control induced by wine. "She makes love to a man's intellect ('aql) before he smiles/Andswindles him of his sense and self-control(hilm)."8 normative For reasonor intellect ('aql) is the key to self-integration,which manifestsitself in morality, virtue (fadl, muruwwa).Reason is the psychic faculty that suppressesand controls the and passions (ahw&P) is thereforeclosely associated with self-control (hilm). Al-Jahiz defines hilm as "thegeneral name of all virtue,the power of reason to suppresspassion (huwaal-ism al-jfimi'li-kullfadl wa huwa sultin al-'aql al-qami' li-l-hawf)."9 We read in al-Adab al-Saghir, a work attributed Ibn al-Muqaffa',that "all virtues belong to to reason(al-muru'at kulluhataba' li-l-'aql)."o Reason is regardedas properlybelonging to the self andthereforeassociatedwith autonomy,while the passions, lusts, andinstincts are regardedas heteronomouslyexertingcontrolover the self. Ibn al-Muqaffa'says that yourreason,anger(ghadab),lust (hawa), and violent emotion (jahl) vie for controlover your tongue. If yourreason succeeds in controllingit, it belongs to you, but if the others Therefore,the dominanceof reason over the passions is do, it belongs to your enemy.11 for you to really be yourself. Yet the passions arethe source of pleasure;only necessary when they are loosened from the dominationof reasoncan one experiencea pleasurable state. Consider the following anecdote reportedby al-Jahiz:"Mu'awiya said to 'Amr ibn al-'As: 'What is pleasure?''Amr replied, 'Commandthe youths of the Qurayshto leave us.' When this was done he said, 'Pleasureis the casting off of virtue (al-ladhdha Al-Jahizadds,"'Amr spoke truly,for graveanddignifiedbehavior tarh al-muruwwa).'" cannotexist withouta greatburdenupon the self and exhaustingdiscipline."12 The identification of virtue (muruwwa)with the overwhelming effort required to of conform to standards courtlybehaviorwould appearto stand in contrastto the more heroic ethos of virtue associated with pre-Islamic life. This contrastno doubt arises in that the context of the social transformations took place with the formationof an Islamic the empire and, in particular, dominanceof courtly life and institutionsover the social patternsand ideals of the ruling class. The sociologist Norbert Elias has argued that the emergenceof more centralizedpolitical authoritywithin society, particularly of that an absolutistcourt,brings about greatersocial complexity, increaseddifferentiationof roles and division of labor, and largerand more involved networksof interdependence. The higher degree of complexity and the centralizedconcentrationof power and force requiremore rigorousregulationof patternsof behaviorachieved throughgreater,more invasive control of emotional impulses. This is true in the highest degree at the level of court and elite society, where competitionfor power, reputation,and other forms of social capital,with little or no recourseto force, dictatesutmostcare and self-awareness in social interactionsof which even the most trivial may adversely affect one's status and livelihood. From this perspective we can view texts on how to behave in social

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and, particularly, courtly settings such as al-Adab al-Kabir by Ibn al-Muqaffa',which outlines a programof intense scrutinyand regulationof one's emotions so as to control them successfully in pursuitof one's own ends and conceal them from the designs of one's ever watchfulenemies. Elias argues furtherthat both internaland external mechanisms of control work to eliminate sharp fluctuations in behavior and affect by applying constant pressureto diminish and even out the range of emotional intensity. The result is that individuals become moreregularin theirconduct,morerigorouslydetermined behavioralregimes by and expectations, and less prone to reactions of extreme passion and violence. They become more"civilized." The cost, however,accordingto Elias, is a significantreduction in the capacityfor pleasurableexperience.'"Considerin this regardal-Jahiz'sextended definitionof self-control(hilm): of and of are (shirra), prevention flightsof rashness Suppression anger, stillingof ardor (khurq) notmoreworthy thisname[hilm] suppression excessive of than of of (ridd), gladness overcoming from excessive andpanic, fear to over-hastiness lusts,andabstaining excessive andwantonness, joy in excessiveambition, praiseandblame,greed,over-eagerness grasping opportunities, intensity of yearning sensitivity, and excessivecomplaint disappointment, and to of proximity gladness vexation vice versa,andfrommovements tongueandbodythatfollowno known and of pattern andhaveno apparent or purpose utility.'4 The programmatic definitionoffered here manifeststhe imperativeof emotional dampand stabilizationin spelling out what al-Jahizregardsto be the essential features ening of the self-integratedindividual.These features are linked to high social status, as alJahiz indicates in describingthe man of self-control as one who "belongs to the elite, seeks leadershipandcourtslordship,adornshimself with cultureandrefinement(adab), maintainsgrave and dignified demeanor."'" mannerin which al-Jahiz sets out the The of self-control suggests a discursiveintensificationof the opposition between meaning reasonand passion in the courtly setting.This should lead, as suggested by Elias, to the enfeeblementof emotions within individualsand thus to the reductionof theircapacity for pleasure.At the discursivelevel, however,the emphasison the near-impossibility of controllingthe passions has the effect of sharpeningthe bifurcationwithin the self that the opposition between reason and the passions posits and of aggrandizingthe power and potentialpleasurabilityof desire. The more monstrousthe depiction of desire, and the more intense the struggle requiredto control it, the greaterthe harvestof pleasure promised by its eventual fulfillment. Yet the promise must apply to the loosening of desire in a more directfashion, as well. This is precisely what is graphicallydepictedby the wine poem in the same elite, courtly setting invokedby al-Jahiz. The motifs of the wine poem thereforesketch the unravellingof rationalself-control through effects that invert the virtues associated with reason while preserving their structure.The primaryconsequence of self-dissolution is the dominance of violent emotion (jahl), the oppositeof self-control,whichbringsstatesof passionateexcess such as farah (joy), wajd (ardour),and tarab (rapture),the latterparticularly conjunction in with music. These conditionsconfer pleasureand constitutetrueenjoyment('aysh) but are characterized moraldissolution (talTh,fitna) and sin. This is particularly evident by in the violent and transgressiveterms used to describe the drinker'snight out, such as to fatk (marauding)and qasf (destruction).Surrendering uncontrolledpassionatestates

Heterotopiaand the WinePoem 349 throughthe suspension of reason results in liberationfrom care (hamm),the immense burdenof anxiety constitutiveof the empiricalself. "Shatter clinging cares with musical be perpetuallyblissful with the daughterof the vine."16 Care is rapture(tarab)/And the term for all of the miseries of ordinaryexistence, the subjective experience of fate. Therefore,the lifting of care signifies escape from everyday life. To be blissful perpetually,in spite of fate ('alhial-dahr), means to escape time and fate and hence to be carefree.Wine is the privilegedmeans to this condition. "I will cut the cords of care with the wine glass/Forthere is no physician for care like the wine glass."'7 The eliminationof caregoes handin handwith moraldissolution,because the essence of care is the constant struggle to control desire and to satisfy it in prescribedways. Care lies in the self-awarenessnecessary to conform to social norms and expectations, to maintainone's statusand propriety.The eliminationof care is thereforeattendedby variousforms of excess throughwhich the drinkerexceeds the bounds of the empirical self ordinarilyunderrationalcontrol.In additionto emotional excess, the poet glorifies in the prodigious amounts of wealth and time squanderedfor the sake of wine. "My heartfell for her and her love made me hate/Everyvaluablething that I possess."'8The generous man happily gives up his wealth in a socially productivemannerout of his love of glory and virtue. His self-sacrifice gives life to the community. The drinker, however-the generous man's demonic twin-makes sure to pay the highest price possible to non-Muslims for the socially useless end of self-dissolution, the opposite of virtue. Even the miser, who is the most bound to quotidian contingency and thus practices the severest form of self-suppression,becomes a liberal spender under the influence of wine. "Shebanishescare andrelaxes the heartof the miser."19 this regard In we can consider the double meaning of fadl (surplus, excess) as used by al-Jahiz. It designates both virtue, in the sense of surplus,and moral dissolution, in the sense of excess or waste. Al-Jahiz explains this by saying that reason "fetterssurplus(fadl) and restrainsit from becoming excess (furut) in the path of ignorance, errorand harm."20 The wine poem is devoted to turningsurplusinto excess. The drinkersquandersnot only his wealth, but also his honor.He reveals his "secret" and willingly exposes himself to public shame: Don'tyou see thatI'verelinquished honor wine to my Andto bitingthelipsof a charming fawn.21 has of My covering beenrentin thepursuit pleasure Andmy cloistered secrets havecomeoutintotheopen.22 Revealing one's secret, a frequent motif in Abu Nuwas's wine poetry, constitutes a critical transgressionof the boundariesof personhood.Al-Jahiz has thematizedthis in his epistle Kitman al-Sirr wa Hifz al-Lisan (Concealing the Secret and Guardingthe Tongue).In this epistle, al-Jahizcasts concealing one's secret as a privilegedinstanceof the struggleof reasonto tamethe passions.To let out the secretis to yield to desire,to lose self-controland surrender oneself to the controlof one's enemy. Al-Jahizmakesholding one's secret emblematic of self-possession and personal autonomy.The "secret"itself becomes a metaphorfor the inner self that must be kept concealed and undercontrol, a task thateven the most virtuousfind nearly impossible, because "thereis nothing more difficult than overcoming the passions."23 Revealing the secret, then, is tantamountto releasing the inner self and succumbingto the dominanceof the passions. Successfully

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The wine poet signifies the violationof holding the secretis the markof self-integration. selfhood by describinghimself as "havinga rent covering (munhatik al-sitr)." ordinary The curtainor veil that keeps inviolable what is properto his self as an individualand therebypreserveshis respectabilityand standingwithin society has been torn off. His interiorityhas come into the open. This utterloss of face, more hateful to most people than death, the drinkerwelcomes, showing that the contingencies of his empiricalself have been completely cast off. and The ultimateforms of self-transgression dissolution are sex and death."Thereis Death is associatedboth no good in life if you arenot/Slainby gazelles and wine cups."24 with intoxication itself and with the extinction of self-consciousness and self-control broughtaboutby erotic infatuationand the sexual act. Wine poems often end with a sex The scene, usually of a homoeroticvariety.25 drinkingof wine is the means to attaining this privilegedform of pleasure,which serves as the culminationof self-dissolution.The sexual act violates bordersof bodily and personalidentity and stands for the complete to suspension of reason and surrender instinctualdesires. It requiresthe transgression of ordinarysocial taboos. When illicit, as it must be in the wine poem, its transgressive natureis complete. Georges Bataille, in his analysis of sexuality from this perspective, asks, "Whatdoes physical eroticism signify if not a violation of the very being of its He practitioners?-a violation borderingon death,borderingon murder?" continues: of a dissolution stateto thatof eroticdesirepresupposes partial fromthe normal Thetransition Dissolution-thisexpression the personas he existsin the realmof discontinuity. corresponds of .... linkedwitheroticactivity Thewholebusiness withthedissolute the familiar life, phrase as of character theparticipators theyarein theirnormal the eroticism to destroy self-contained is lives.26 of This is preciselythe nature sexualityas it appearsin the wine poem, whichconcentrates on the scandalousand violent featuresof the sexual relation.The violation of self and other thatthe drinkerachieves throughsex signifies the completion of his regressionto the inner self, his escape from everydaylife and the empirical self, and his union with fate and the forces of nature.Illicit sex, with its symbolically potent mixtureof power, danger,and pleasure,is the ultimateliminal act of the wine poem.
TRANSGRESSIVE DESIRE AND THE DESCRIPTION OF WINE

The description of wine invests wine with the properties that allow it to transform the drinkerby transferinghim from the everyday reality of the empirical self to the dangerous,supremelypleasurabledomain of primordialdesire, to which the inner self The belongs.27 propertiesof wine thereforecorrespondto those of the innerself. Like the "high" poetic genres,the wine poem revealsthe truenatureof the self throughthe features with which it endows its object of description.In contrastto them, however,the wine poem finds this truthnot in an ideal self of moralperfectionand sublimateddesire,butin the "real" underlyingnaturethatunitesus with all beings. Forthe wine poem, the release of the primaldesiring self offers the same euphoriaof power and pleasurepromisedby the discourses of self-fulfillment in the higher realm of virtue. Therefore, it endows wine with the same otherworldly,spiritualcharacteristicsordinarily associated with virtue. Yet the path of fulfillment offered by wine leads to transcendenceof everyday

Heterotopiaand the WinePoem 351 reality not through moral perfection of the self but through self-dissolution. For the wine poem, escape from everyday life, the aleatory domain of care and constraint, is achieved through the violation of its moral order, the overturningof its stifling inhibitions. Transcendencelies in what surpasses and confounds everyday categories: excess, paradox,non-identity.So it is that the descriptionof wine embodies a demonic it realmof bliss andwisdomthatis liminalin character, spirituality; figuresa transcendent a "heterotopia" that arises not from the perfection of ordinaryexistence, but from its negation. Throughthe descriptionof wine the wine poem reconfiguresthe qualities ordinarily associatedwith desire so as to makedesiretranscendent everydaylife. Like primordial of to desire, wine is natural-that is, wine is anterior the discontinuityof selfhood, the rules of society, and the categoriesof cognition. It returnsthe drinkerto the realmof pleasure and continuity that precede individuation.For this reason, the poet calls the vine his mother, who "suckled me with her milk and wrapped me/In her shade against the The maternalvine fulfills his need and insulates him from searing mid-day heat."28 the world's harm.His dependenceon this mother is the same as that of any infant. "I crawled to nurse from her with the alacrityof a child become hungry."29 contrastto In mother'smilk, however,wine does not confer a purely naturalform of bliss; it does not simply reinstatethe satietyof infancy.Its effect is an exhilaratingregressionthatundoes the vestments of selfhood. Ratherthan returningthe drinkerto a pre-existing,innocent nature,wine producesa naturethatis the undoingof culture.This is a naturethatcomes into being throughthe violation and exceeding of the boundariesof cultureand is thus a naturesubsequentto cultureand inclusive of it. We can see this paradoxicalform of naturein the descriptionof wine as both raw and cooked. "Cookedby the sun, not by any pot/Of water,no, nor searedby any fire."30 Cooking is the process that brings the productsof natureinto the moral orderof society. To be cooked by the sun (i.e., to be aged), however,is to be cooked by time andfate, which aredevoid of moralorder.It is to be perfectedby the agent of corruption,to become humanthroughexcessive exposure to the inhuman.Wine is thus simultaneouslynaturaland cultural,a form of naturethat subsumes culture throughparadox.The description of wine exalts natureas disorder and chaos, ratherthan as primitivesimplicity,by depicting natureas the transcendence of culturethough its negation.3' The key to the realitydepictedin the wine poem lies in its realignmentof the ordinary relationshipbetween transgressionand normativity,linking the former to fulfillment and the latterto fate. The transgressivecharacterof wine is formalizedin its status as Like legally prohibited(haradm). the desiringself, it is inimicalto the orderanddiscipline of everyday life and thereforemust be put off limits. This fact is crucial to the wine poem. There is no issue here of any possible loophole in the prohibition,or of wine as something that merely enhances ordinary social interaction. It must be outside the bounds of decency, the conduitto a state that overflows and sweeps away the legal and moralframeworkthatregulatessocial life. "I hit it off with the forbidden(haram)when we meet;/I recoil from the company of the permitted(hal il)."32Prohibitedthings and practicesare often regardedas sources of power and danger.In manyinstances,they are understoodas lying on the marginsof ordinaryexistence and transgressingits bounds, thus coming into contact with or belonging to the superordinary realmthat containsthe power to sustain as well as to destroy ordinarylife. For this reason, somethingmay be

352 YaseenNoorani both sacred and forbidden,a conjunctionfamiliarin the term "taboo."Such an object, because of its status as outside of everyday life and regulation, its connection with powers, must be approachedwith great care.33 The category "haram," extraordinary in what is perhaps an archaic semantic substratum,has a similar meaning, as in the phrase "al-masjidal-harim (the sacredsite of worship [of Mecca])."Operativehere is the oppositionbetween the superordinary, ringedby special protocols and conferringan and the everyday,belonging to the routinepatternsof secondnature. state, extraordinary Although this opposition is usually supersededby the more purely legal opposition of illicit andlicit, the firstoppositionremainspresentlatentlyor as a constituentof thelegal category. It is this opposition and its apparentincompatibilitywith the legal category on which Abu Nuwas's aesthetic treatmentof wine centers. Wine is sinful. Drinkingit attractsthe wrath of God. Yet it confers great power on the drinkerand liberateshim from everyday life. Therefore,it is both sacred and illicit-sacred because it is illicit. Through this paradox, the wine poem transvaluesaesthetically the domain of illicit pleasure,makingit coextensive with the sacred,higher realmordinarilyassociatedwith virtue. The descriptionof wine thereforeinvests wine with spiritual,divine, and celestial attributes.The realm of spirit is eternal-that is, it is not subject to the rule of dahr is (time, fate). The wine poem gives wine this quality,as well. A primemanifestation the celestial or cosmic characterof wine. "As thoughthe cups of wine as they circulated/In the darknesswere the stars of Orion."34The wine poet persistentlycompareshis drink to the stars, whose movement constitutes the visible clock of fate. Yet the stars, by virtue of being fate, are not subject to it or of it; they belong to the eternal realm of the heavens. To this realm the drinkerof wine is transported. "When the drinkersips his wine you imagine/In the dark of the night he is kissing a star."'3 Wine is celestial because it miraculouslyproduces light. This, too, indicates its supernatural origin in a realm opposed to the darkbodies of ordinaryexistence. "As though it were a firebrand in its glass/Incandescent,yet without heat or flame."36 The freedom of wine from the authorityof fate is also indicated in its age. Like the soul, wine pre-exists time and is not corrupted it. by Herage is thatof timeor greater; An old woman enormous of consequence. Chosen whenthestarswerestillTheirmotion couldnotaffecther. Timecontinuously consumed Herbody;shedidnotopposeit, Untilhergrossportion vanished, Andherspirit huecamefree. and Shefinished a subtle as essence Whosepresence exceedstheeye.37 The terms designating the nature of wine come from philosophical and theological discourses that posit a higher world of imperceptiblespiritualessences separatefrom the lower world of gross, perishing bodies.38To this higher world belongs divinity itself. Therefore,wine mingles with divinity and takes on its attributes.Like God, it bestows blessings (alai') and has beautiful names.39Like God, it is too sublime for

Heterotopiaand the WinePoem 353 language and imagination,so that the conjecturesof intellect to which it gives rise are as diverse as the theological doctrinesof the differentreligions.40 Indeed, people often prostratethemselves before it. By endowing wine with these attributes,the wine poem the appropriates spiritualrealm and reveals its full character.The descriptionof wine desiresto belong to the higher, shows the domainof the "lower"self andits transgressive sacredrealmof light and spirit,with the resultthatthe higherrealmis revealedas fusing the spiritualand the demonic in a liminal totality. The world of the wine poem, then, consists of two opposed states: the care and constraintof everyday life, and the sacred bliss of primordialdesire attainedthrough Any fulfillmentof desirebelongs to the latter,meaningthatall fulfillment transgression. is transgressivein nature.The wine poem establishes this throughthe attributeswith which it invests wine. We can consider in this regard wine's sexual attributes.Wine is both a virgin and an old lady (bikr 'ajfiz).41 Simultaneousyouth and age signifies is of transcendence time;this characteristic often ascribedin a masculineformto the hero of panegyricpoetry,who is the ultimatefigureof moralself-perfection.The propertiesof wine, however,derivefromits associationwith desire.Being an old womanlinks it to this world(al-dunya),which is conventionallydepictedas an old womanwho has speciously beautified herself to attractlovers whom she can grant no satisfaction.Wine redeems the temptationsof this world and lifts them into the higherrealm normallycontrastedto this world by unitingeternitywith direct sexual fulfillment as a sort of inverse parallel of the perpetualvirgins of paradise.The drinker"deflowersa virgin-oldlady beautified This metaphorextends to by old age/Decked out as a girl serious about pleasure."42 violate furtherdistinctionson which the orderof everydaylife is based. The frequently motif of "marriage" the virginwine makesa travestyof ordinary to encountered marriage boundariesof endogamy and reveals the inherentlytransgressivenatureof by crossing marriageby equatingit with sacrifice. The wine taken by the Muslim poet as his bride is the daughterof a non-Muslim household. "He counted out the bride price, then she Here we have was wed to him/In her bridalclothes and in her sacred belt (zunnlir)."43 for an apotheosis of "marriage pleasure,"which systematically subverts,both socially and and symbolically,the design of ordinarymarriageas the linchpinof social structure nexus of socially productiveexchange-not to mention the reproductive(though not sexual) nullity of marriageto wine. Yet ordinarymarriagealso attractsthroughits promise of pleasure,an institutionally validatedpleasureharnessedto social ends. This pleasure,however, is itself a form of transgression--evidentin how much social andlibidinalstock is placed in violating, and thus establishing, the virginity of the bride. The wine poem exposes the transgressive natureof this act by casting the defloweringof the virgin bride-that is, the perforation of the wine cask-as a blood sacrifice. "I insertedthe spike in the darknight/And the Thus, the wedding culminatesin the sacrifice liquid of the piercedarterygushed out."44 of the bride. Wine is the correlateof desire and, like desire, can be released only by means of a violation. Because such release of desire results in rapturouspleasure, in Fromthispointof view, social the self-transcendence, violationis "sanctified." temporary obsession with the consummatingact of marriageis bound up in the extreme violation this act constitutes when not authorized.The same act may be either an abomination or a sacrament,but when it is the latter,its bloody, violatory natureis no less publicly fetishized. As Bataille has observedfrom a similarperspective,"[S]exualintercoursein

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marriageor outside it has always somethingof the natureof a criminalact, particularly where a virgin is concerned."45 the wine poem, a criminalact (wine drinking)is cast In in the form of a socially sanctionedinstitution(marriage),which is then shown to have "somethingof the natureof a criminalact."In this way, the key institutionof social life is shown to base itself on a sanctifiedviolation of the very orderit regulates. orderedworld Pleasure,or the releaseof desire,is thusthe escape fromthe normatively of everydaylife. In the worldof the wine poem, desire is preciselythe over-reaching and of all categoriesand normsof thought,behavior,identity.Wine thereforehas unraveling this character, well. It, too, is paradoxical,unidentifiable, as self-overflowing.Consider, for example, the impossibilityof attachinga particularwine to a specific geographicor religious community: Christian lineage,Muslim village, by by in in Syrian domicile, Iraqi origin. averse theadherents herreligion to of Zoroastrian, though Dueto herhatred thefiretheykeeplighted.46 of Again, the wine is characterized multiple, incompatibleidentities.This overflowing by of boundariesextends to the physical natureof the wine, as well. Wine is a spiritnot confined to the body. It is effulgent; its light not only fills the room it occupies, but it appearsto be morningbreakingand can serve as a guide for travelersin the night. Its fragrance,when the cask is pierced,overpowersthe assembly.When mixed with water, it erupts with foam and sparks and causes those present to sneeze. It contains a fiery strength(sawra) similar to that of the lusts and passions. It flows out of its container and mingles with the bodies of others. Similarly,on a cognitive level, wine provesto be ungraspable.It is likened to a glitteringmirage in the desert. Its "meaning"(ma'na) is so subtle that it can be sought only throughconjecture.The eye fails in the attemptto visualize it. The imaginationcannot fix it. It is impossible to form any certaintyabout it.47In all of these respects,wine exceeds its physical location,its materialmanifestation, and the social and cognitive categories by which it ought to have a unitaryidentity.It therebymirrorsthe desiring self and serves as the prime means of access to it. Forthis reason,the descriptionof wine standsin for the process of transitionfrom the everyday state of confinementwithinthe empiricalself to the stateof self-transcendence achieved throughtemporarydissolution of this self. The descriptionof wine poetically conjures the euphoricescape from ordinaryexistence, so that when the descriptioncomes to an end, the new state is fully in effect.
THE LOGIC OF THE WINE POEM

We are now in a position to examine the wine poem's logic of de-sublimation,which counters the logic of the courtly panegyric. Both the panegyric and the wine poem are concerned with self-transcendence,the liberationfrom fate and nature, from the constraint and suffering of quotidian existence. To attain this goal, they set out in opposing directions.The form of the panegyricis linearand dialectical in that it traces a totalizingmovementbeginningwith enthrallment natureand culminatingin eternal to moral fulfillment attainedthroughthe person of the heroic ruler.The linear movement preservesthe distinctionof opposedcategoriesandresolves themby lifting themintothe higher,utopianrealm of virtue.Moralordersubsumesfate and desire in its harmonious

Heterotopiaand the WinePoem 355 wine poem usuallytakesan open-endedor circular totality.In contrast,the polymorphous form thathas no point of final resolutionor closure. The wine poem is characterized by paradoxin that it combines opposed categories without resolving them. Its movement cannot be totalizing because it depicts an ephemeralcontact with the realm of eternity thathas no lasting issue but can only be perpetuallyrepeated.Ratherthanuplift the self into a beatific union with the virtuous community,the wine poem dissolves the self, bringing about a re-immersionin primordialdesire, a symbolic reunion with nature. The logic of the panegyricimplies thatof the wine poem because the chaotic, insatiable natureof desire is essential to both. definitive Both the panegyricandthe wine poem begin with the conditionof separation beloved. The wine poem of the empiricalself, figuredthroughthe idealized,unattainable the enables us to understand condition of separationthroughthe pictureit gives of the self and its strugglewith desire. In this picture,the empiricalself comes into empirical being throughthe constraintof desire. Desire strivesto burstout of the bonds of the self, to reattainits primordialstate of free, undifferentiated continuity.The self, however, strives to augment and perfect itself by constrainingdesire as much as possible. The self is a contingent, artificial construct in that its identity is determinedby random factors-pressures of social norms and expectations,the accidents of one's social and culturalidentity,one's family,one's particular body, and all the otheraccidentsthatform one and give rise to the petty and ephemeralcontents of one's everydayconsciousness. The empirical self, determinedby all of these contingentfactors, can never succeed in winning the strugglewith desire by taking up all of desire into itself. Desire is absolute in that it demandsnothing short of total release and can only be convertedinto a form with itself; the artificialempiricalself cannotcontainit. The self's attempt commensurate to channeldesire into factitiouspathways,pleasuresthatappearto offer satisfaction,are doomed to failurebecause they fall woefully shortof the full unleashingthatis required. The inability to satisfy desire is thereforeexperiencedas a lack, an incompletenessof the self. Desire is perceivedas fate-the naturalforce thatrules the self with impossible demands,the tyrantthatcan be neithermasterednor propitiated. The self thereforeseeks to eliminate its sense of lack by finding what would redeem it. In other words, desire, straitenedwithin the self, focuses on objects that appearto offer an ultimate fulfillment that would put an end to the struggle and thus provide self-completion. Such an object is the beloved. Idealizationof the beloved is precisely the hope, the delusion, thatunion with the beloved would gratifydesire once and for all and thus redeemthe self of its lack. Therecan be no such union, andeach failed instance appearsas a victory of fate. The impossibility of satisfying desire, of filling the lack, of having the ideal beloved, is the fatalityto which the empiricalself is doomed. Consider the following opening of a wine poem: in 1. Oneaccommodating glanceandchasteof tongue, timid,uncompliant, Fetchingly 2. Mixingforme hopewithdespair, in nearin speech. Remote action, addresses 3. Whenhis seriousness you, His seriousness beliesthetalkof yourhopes. 4. YetI accept whatfancies refuted plainsight, Occur me, though to by

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5. Taking uponmyselfto unifya thing it in Singlein word,multiple meaning, 6. Standing theimagination sucha waythat in in WhenI seekit I seekanobscure location, 7. As if I werefollowing senseof a thing my Rightbeforemebutindistinct. 8. So I tooksolacein anunmixed wine of Brought in thelapof themother time.48 up These lines depictthe ideal andunattainable character the beloved with the conceptual of wit of the badf' style.49 This has the benefitof bringingout morefully the "metaphysical" natureof the beloved'sdistancefromthe lover.The premiseof the lines is thatthe beloved is paradoxicalin that he appearsto offer what the poet desires but in fact does not, a contradictionthe poet is unable to reconcile or tolerate. It is not simply an accidental and reversible incompatibilityof lover's desire and beloved's will, however; the poet indicates this, in verse 5, by identifying the beloved with the polysemic characterof language.The polysemic beloved, like meaningin language,is intrinsicallyungraspable, unpossessable. Indeed, it is precisely because the beloved is accessible only through consciousness and language, that he appearsto be but cannot be fixed as the image of desire. The beloved signifies the fulfillment of desire, the missing part of the self that, if captured,would eliminate the experience of fate and confer self-completion. Yet this signification is impossible. There is no such supplementthat can make good the self's illusory lack. The condition of fulfillment that precedes the sense of lack created by the empirical self is anteriorto language and signification, inaccessible to consciousness. The "blindsite" or "conundrum" verse 6) to which the poet (mu'ammit; is led is precisely the location of untrammeled,fulfilled desire as it appears within language and consciousness. The alienationof desire into language and consciousness has the effect of setting up an unceasing procession of beloveds that unsuccessfully signify the utopian bliss of fulfillment. The idealized beloved thereby becomes the poetic emblem of the endlessly thwarteddesire for self-completion definitive of the empiricalself and its everydayexistence. The panegyric escapes this situation by embarkingon the purgationof the self of its attachmentsto natureand finding the ideal self, the redemptionof its lack, in the realm of social virtue.The heroic rulerprovidesthe figure for the conquest of fate and self-transcendencethroughsubsumptionin the virtuous community.The dark side of death-is directedwholly againstthe enemies of the moral nature-violence, constraint, into order,while nature'sallure,its specious promiseof sensual bliss, is transmuted the spiritualbliss of abidingevermorein the indestructiblevalues of the just community.50 The wine poem goes in the opposite direction.The Dionysian reversionto primordial desireeliminatesfate not by subjectingit to a highermoralorderbutby meltingbackinto fate itself, becoming one with it. The experience of fate as such can exist only through the empirical self and its struggle with desire. The temporarysuspension of this self and experience of fusion with natureand naturalbeing eliminates self-consciousness, stateof continuity.The contingency,constraint,and lack. It re-establishesthe primordial resulting feeling of immense power arises not from control over fate per se, but from the eliminationof fate as the experienceof the tyrannyof an externalforce over the self.

Heterotopiaand the WinePoem 357 In this regardwe can considerthe reversaldepicted in the wine poem thatbegins "ya sahir al-tarf."5"This poem begins with an impassioned addressto one whose languid, enchantingeyes revealthe secretof hearts,who is nakedof thatin which time has clothed the poet, and whose effect on the poet is fatal. The poet encouragesthe ravishingyouth to indulge in wine, whose descriptionfollows, leading to a final scene of drunkenness andvice, "obedienceto Satan," which the poet has his way with the youthby means of in "violationand transgression (zulmwa 'udwan)."The poem ends with the poet's callous rebuff to the weeping youth's anguished complaint, "I said, 'A lion saw a fawn and pouncedupon it/Thusare the many-coloredtwists of fate."'J. S. Meisami has discussed this poem as a parodyof the conventionsof love poetry (ghazal). Throughthe contrast between its final and initial scenes, the poem "deliberately invokes 'reality'and opposes that (putative) reality to the idealism of much contemporarylove poetry of both the courtlyand 'Udhri varieties."52 A more complete specification of the opposition between "ideal"and "real"allows us to take this analysis a step further.The initial idealizationof the beloved is brought on by the constraintand sufferingof everydaylife, the state of separation.The beautiful youth signifies everything the poet wants to have and to be but cannot. The youth's form is the image of desire-his eyes expose the "secretof hearts," taboo interiority the imprisonedwithin the self. Himself free from fate, he is the instrumentby which fate torturesthe poet. Withinthe realm of the mind's images he has sovereignty.The poet's liberationfrom this state of impotententhrallment, signified by the descriptionof wine, comes through a regression to the "real,"the primordialstate of desire unfetteredby the contingencies of the empirical self. The poet revertsto a naturalstate and becomes one with fate. The ideal thereforecorrespondsto the conditionof everydaylife, while the "real"transcendsthis condition.Whereasthe poet is initially the victim of both fate and the beautifulyouth, the effects of wine allow him to identify with fate and victimize the youth,just as lions victimize gazelles. This reversalinvertsthe movement of panegyric poems throughits parodyof the progressionfrom lover to hunterthat occurs especially in poems culminatingin self-praise(fakhr). In this sort of depiction, the poet is initially broughtto the point of death by the women he is infatuatedwith, whom he likens to he becomes the hunter gazelles and antelope.After the purgativesequence of the and slayer of such animals.53 In the context of self-praise,huntingsignifies the conquest rah.il, of fate, mastery of nature for the sake of the community,which is at the same time self-mastery,control over one's own desires. In Abu Nuwas's parody,the lion's sexual violation of the gazelle is an act of fate, a dissolutionof moralorder,the freeing of desire from the self. The poet's identificationwith this lion of fate signifies the completion of his regression.54 The inversion of self-praise is indeed a generic transformation,a substitutionof heroism with the "mock-heroic,"as John N. Mattock has argued.55 The paradoxical natureof this mock-heroismis indicatedat the close of anotherpoem recountinga night of dissolute pleasures, where the poet concludes, "We were, underGod's eyes, a most wickedcompany/Swaggering the fineryof sin, no boasting(fakhr)."56The drinkers in are the negative image of the utopiancommunity;they enjoy the blissful euphoriaoffakhr withoutthe virtue,the moralperfection,that constitutesits content. They swagger with the flush of pride,yet they have willingly given up the social basis of actualself-praise, for the poem takes the violation of secrecy, the repudiationof honor and reputation,as

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its point of departure. The drinkers mock courage by sacrificing themselves not in the path of social virtue, but in the socially useless pursuit of pleasure. The inversion of the heroism of fakhr through its parody in the grandeur of depravity sets in relief the counter-logic of the wine poem. Whereas the panegyric culminates in the completion of the empirical self, the redemption of its lack, and the conquest of fate, the wine poem suspends the self and thus eliminates its lack by fusing with fate. The two states, however, offer identical sensations of power and pleasure. They are subjectively indistinguishable but that one is eternal while the other a momentary taste of eternity. "We lived [it up], and that was for us, eternal;/Then when it passed, it was a thing borrowed."57 The heterotopian path of escape from everyday life charted by the wine poem therefore accesses the same realm of pleasure, of spiritual bliss, as the utopian panegyric, in that desire finds total fulfillment in both. For this reason, the wine poem casts the experience of self-dissolution as a kind of spirituality, a form of contact with divinity-that is, with the authentic plane of existence that finds only a distorted and attenuated expression within the framework of the empirical self and its world. In contrast to ordinary piety, which serves as the handmaid of everyday life, mounting a deluded and hypocritical effort to renounce desire while shaping it in conformity with the demands of pure contingency, the spirituality of transgression and self-dissolution provides an experience of authenticity, a brief immersion in the immense, unfathomable forces from which our existence ultimately derives.58 This experience cannot displace everyday life or the moral discourses that regulate it; rather, it categorically alters the nature of our consciousness and our values through the brief access it provides to a perspective from within the "real" that transcends the narrow, contingent, and ephemeral perspective ordinarily available. We can consider in this regard one of Abu Nuwas's most celebrated wine poems,59 said to be addressed to the Muctazili theologian Ibrahim al-Nazzam (d. 840): 1. Leave off blaming me, for blame is temptation, And medicate me with what had been my malady. 2. A golden wine, that sorrowsnever visitWere a stone to touch it that stone would be touchedby joy. 3. Served up by one with a cunt dressed up like one with a penisShe has two lovers: a pederastand a fornicator. 4. As she stood with her wine jar in the darkof the night, The brightlight of her face illuminedthe house. 5. Fromthe mouth of the jar she dispatcheda wine so pure Thatto seize it with the eye was to lose consciousness. 6. So refinedthat waterdid not suit it In fineness and recoiled from its form. 7. Wereyou to mix it with light they would blend And give birthto multiplelights. 8. It revolved among youths to whom time had yielded So that it sent them only what they desired. 9. I weep for that [wine] and not for an abode Once occupied by Hind and Asma. 10. Farbe it from my wine to have tents erected for her Among which graze camels and sheep. 11. So say to the one who claims philosophicalknowledge, "You'velearneda thing or two and missed the rest.

Heterotopiaand the WinePoem 359 12.Don'tforeclose [God's] forgiveness simplybecause you areaninhibited manYour foreclosure it is contempt religion."60 of for The wine poem mountsits polemic againstreasonand everydaylife throughthe heterotopianrealitythatit invokes.61 Transgression permitsentryinto a worldcharacterized by in which blame is temptationand maladies are medicines. This is the paradox paradox, of transcendenceand overabundance, vividly embodied in the erotic plenitude of the double-sexedcup bearer.The drinkprohibitedby law turnsout to belong to the domain of light and spirit, of subtle essences antitheticalto the gross and quotidiansubstances of ordinaryexistence. Fate is no longer the archenemybut ministersto the desires of the antisocialcounter-society formedby the drinkingcompanions.Timehas, for the moment, while the revolutionof the luminous wine cup displaces that of the stars. stopped, The experience of this higher realm grants the drinkera knowledge to which his censurer,the theologian, can have no access. The theologian's stricturesare designed to consolidate the boundariesof the empirical self and regulatethe order of everyday life. In the name of the deferral of pleasure to the afterlife, the theologian represses and mutilatesdesire in the presentby demandingits imprisonmentwithin the limits of his rationalcategories. In other words, he imagines that the wordly contingencies that determinesocial normsand the limits of his own reasoningare absolutesthatgovern all of existence, forgettingthat desire is an irreduciblewhole that can be fulfilled only as such.His repudiation excess desireis hypocritical,for it derivesfromthe entrenchment of of his own inhibitionsand his enslavementto them. Simply because he is an inhibited man he cannot suffer anyone else to be uninhibited and imagines that God cannot, either. What escapes him is that it is precisely these inhibitions of the self that block us from authentic sensations of divinity inaccessible through ordinaryconsciousness and cognition. Transgressionof the self is the drinker'sback door to the divine. It allows him to perceive viscerally that the realm of divinity and spiritualityfar exceeds the normativecategories, such as the "good" and the "licit,"that are indispensablefor ordinaryexistence. It confers a sense of the supremepleasure and power of continuity from which all individualshave been alienatedand are ordinarilybanished.It altershis self-consciousnessby grantinga perspectiveoutside the self thatrevealsthe contingency and ephemeralityof all thatordinarilypreoccupiesmundaneconsciousness. The theologian's sin, however,does not lie in his stricturesand inhibitions,for these are necessary-there can be no transgression withouta taboo, and permanent extinction of the self is impossible short of madness and death. It lies, rather,in his denial of redemptionto those who transgress(see verse 12). Throughthis denial, the theologian limits the divine andthe authenticdesirebelonging to the realmof divinityto the poverty of his own personalconcept. He cannot admit the possible authenticityof anythinghe happens to find abhorrentand irreconcilableto his categories of valuation. He cannot fathom that God is transcendent quotidianreality and must comprise both the taboo of and its transgression.Imprisonedwithin the confines of his self, and barredfrom any genuine sense of divinity,the theologiandeifies an etiolatedfigmentof his consciousness in place of God.62 The ecstasy of self-dissolution,which by virtueof its brief durationheightens awareness of the misery and delusion of ordinaryexistence all the more, gives rise to feelings

360 YaseenNoorani of nostalgiaand regret.To weep over wine, however,is a far cry from weeping overlost beloveds and theirvestigial camp sites (see verse 9). The chaste bedouin lover or urban epigone mocked in wine poems weeps over the emblem of his imprisonmentwithinthe and everyday,the false idol whose idealizationwithinconsciousnessperpetuates sustains straiteneddesire in its futile quest to fulfill its artificiallack. The idealized beloved and dissolves bothin the empiricalself constitutethe illusory dyad of alienation.The drinker his narcoticdraughtand, when the effect has worn off, partiallyredeems his straitened desire by investing it in the "real"from which he has been banishedratherthan in the "ideal"he has seen through.The drinker'srealityis thereforebipolarand cyclical: wine is his medicine as well as his malady, for it both relieves and deepens the suffering of discontinuity.In both conditions he is more authenticthan the lover, who remains enthralledto a figment or void that correspondsto the fate built into his artificialself. Nevertheless, the lover's lament of separationauthenticallyfigures the condition of ordinaryexistence. Therefore,as we are shown in other wine poems, it is precisely as a song of lament, an aesthetic object, that the sufferingof the lover finds redemption.63 The poetic depiction of the lover's passionate excess, set to music, serves as the foil, the point of departure,of euphoric release (tarab). Music and intoxication allow the symbol of the self and its suffering to become an objectified image in which the self may be submerged.To free one's self from the conditionof everydayexistence through its aestheticobjectificationis to transfigureit into somethingwith which one can live.64 Although the spiritualityof the wine poem sets itself in contrastto the stricturesof normativemorality,it does not offer itself as a substitutefor them. It remains a mock effects. It calls not for a revolution religiondependenton the realthingfor its exhilarating but, rather,for a transgressionthat relies on the durabilityof the boundariesit pierces. Moreover, it enacts its transgressionsas an aesthetic game, a symbolic manipulation of normativecategories and contradictionsthat adheres to a logic of replicationand of inversion.It remains,therefore,withinthe framework the courtlyculturewhose ideals it overturns.Its aesthetic de-sublimationis not the depiction of an absolute regression to the primordialbut a dissipation of the moral attributesof perfected selfhood made normativefor the ruling classes by courtly discourses.The critics Peter Stallybrassand Allon White, takingtheir cue from courtly processes of self-constraintin their analysis of the formationof modem bourgeois identity,have arguedthat transgressionis often its the ritualor symbolicpractice a powerful [group]squanders symbolic whereby dominant capitalso as to get in touchwiththe fieldsof desirewhichit denieditselfas the pricepaidfor is desublimation just as transgression not intrinsically Not its political (for power. a repressive a delirious it noris it intrinsically conservative),is a counter-sublimation, expenditure progressive, of of the accrued of thesymbolic (through regulation thebodyandthedecathexis habitus) capital in thesuccessful of struggle bourgeois hegemony.65 of It is precisely such a squandering self-mastery,honor,reputation,and wealth thatthe wine poem depicts for its aesthetic purposes. Abu Nuwas has given this a particularly of explicit form in a poem thatproclaimsthe superiority the Arabsin what might almost to be regardedas a directparodyof the celebratedargumentfor the same attributed Ibn otherpeoplesin Accordingto Ibnal-Muqaffa',the Arabshave outstripped al-Muqaffa'.66 glory (fakhr) and achieveddominionover them because of the superiormoraltraits,the innate virtue, thattheir condition of poverty and deprivationallowed them to manifest.

Heterotopia and the WinePoem 361 Whereas other nations passively inheritedthe ornamentsof culturefrom their fathers, the Arabsdisciplined and tutoredthemselves, thus earningGod's bounty.Abu Nuwas's The poem invertsthis argument.67 wine, allowed to choose her suitor,rejects drinkers with base attributes, well as Zoroastrians, as Jews, and Christians,before demandingto be given only to Arabs.The poem ends with the invocation,"O darkwine forbiddenbut to the man/Whoamassedriches then ruinedfor her sake his money and property." The Arabs have earned the right to have the wine by conqueringthe world throughmoral theirconquestfor pleasure,turningtheirgenerosityinto discipline andthen squandering excess, their virtue into dissolution. This is the logic of dissipation of the wine poem, which symbolically squandersthe moral wealth of the self-integratedman. The wine poem need not appeal to Arab dominance for this purpose;in anotherpoem, it is the Persian who, because of the refinementand sophisticationof their mannersin contrast to the uncouthArabs, are worthyof being the poet's drinkingcompanions.68 Regardless of nationality,the poet's companionsare always "noble youths (fityan sidq)" who, by virtueof theircourtlymannersandunlimitedtime and money,may aspireto the program of dissipationset forthby the wine poem.69 The courtlynatureof Abu Nuwas's wine poem compels us to reconsiderthe relationship betweenpleasureandpowerpositedby Elias. The increasingstringencyof external and internalcontrols over behaviorand affect identifiedby Elias as the "civilizing process" was in effect duringthe age of Abu Nuwas, underthe aegis of both Islamic norms and courtly ideals. The hegemonic deploymentof this process, the social capital made of its effects by ruling classes to justify their ascendency,is also clearly in evidence in the discoursesof the period.Those dominantin the social orderattributed themselves to the highest degree of virtue and self-mastery.Does this mean, however,that these men of power and affluence were more firmly barredfrom pleasure than those otherwise less privileged?Elias arguesthat"thespecifically courtlyway of being civilized, resting on self-constraintthat has become second nature, is one of the things distinguishing court-aristocratic people from all others, an advantagethey believe they enjoy. For this very reasontheir self-constraintis inescapable."70 Dominationof the self is the price of dominionover others.The one respiteElias allows is whathe calls romanticidealization, which he regardsas the basis of all so-called romanticism: seekto escapethepressure theseconstraints-with oppressed of an the [P]eople heart-through of timeswhoarethought havelivedmorefreely,moresimply, to dream-images peopleof earlier morenaturally, short, a wayless affected thecompulsions emotional in in and constriction felt by by thelaterpeople.71 The Abbasid version of this tendency is presumablythe idealization of pre-Islamic bedouin life, popular in courtly and scholarly circles. In his wine poetry, however, Abu Nuwas makes the bedouin the butt of ridicule. The wine poem exalts excess and dissipation and derides the exiguous means and impoverishedpleasures of the desert Arabs.Ratherthansearchfor solace in images of primitivevirtue,the wine poem finds it in sophisticateddecadence.It is not bedouinityper se thatthe wine poem denigratesbut bedouinity as a heroic image of self-formation.Pleasure lies precisely in squandering the moralriches of elite selfhood.72 of Throughits symbolic manipulation normativecategories,then, Abu Nuwas's wine poem reveals the dialectical relationship between self-mastery and desire. Whether

362 YaseenNoorani Elias's doctrineof the diminutionof desire in proportionto the increaseof self-control is accurateat the sociological level, it ignores the reciprocityof the pairat the discursive level. Elias's account in fact replicatesthe elite point of view that casts the inhabitants of past eras and lower social orders as less civilized primitives. It omits, however, the parallel elite ideology of pleasure. As Foucault puts it, "[P]leasureand power do not cancel or turn back against one another;they seek out, overlap, and reinforceone another.They are linked togetherby complex mechanismsand devices of excitationand The incitement."73 wine poem reveals that, at the discursivelevel, self-controlproduces desire ratherthan diminishes it. The more intense the self-restraintthat is called for, the more intense must be the desire calling for restraint.All the more gratifying,then, will be the pleasureheld in store. This is no unsightly byproductof logic but the very foundationof the socio-moral order.For as the wine poem also makes plain, desire is the source of power.The wine poem reveals this throughits reversetransaction,which We cashes in the distinguishingmarksof elite moralsupremacyfor instantgratification. take notice that each inner constraint,each moral inhibition,each boundaryof thereby honoranddisdainis a congealedquantumof desirethatelevatesthe noble man abovehis inferiors.The noble man is not only morerationalthanthe ignoble but strongerin desire. Indeed, he is the formerbecause he is the latter.The triumphaldesire and pleasureof the rulingclass must thereforetakepublic manifestation-whether as extremeviolence, the infernalside of desire, directedat the enemies of the moralorder,or as paradisiacal enjoymentsand luxuries,both licit and illicit, extractedfrom the toil of the undeserving. The wine poem is just such a manifestation,but one that has gone too far, one that has made a vice of necessity, thus making a mockery of the whole enterprisein its the excessive zeal. The wine poem parodiesthe imperativeof elite self-aggrandizement, cultivationand spectaculardisplay of prodigiousselfhood-in short,fakhr-by driving this imperativethrough its limit. The selfless devotion to pleasure contrived by the wine poem is thereforethe mocking obverse of heroism drawnfrom heroism itself, the demonic twin whose distortedfeaturescomplete the truthof his brother. The parodic operationof Abu Nuwas's wine poem has the effect of affirmingthe of lineamentsof the self andthe social hierarchy virtueandpleasurepositedby normative discourses. Nevertheless, the wine poem cannot be regardedmerely as an affirmative genre. It is not simply a titillating but harmless entertainmentthat provides vicarious moral release while unobtrusivelyshoring up the normativeorder.The wine poem's process of inversion secures for it a measure of transcendence.Its provenancein the contradictionthat lies at the heart of normativitygives rise to the meta-perspective of its liminal, demonic spirituality.In embracing the power and danger of desire, it outflanks the discourses that seek to harness the power and suppressthe danger.Abu Nuwas's heterotopiathereforecounters and complements the utopia of ideal selfhood but, at the same time, exceeds it on the level of irony.The wine poem does not resolve the contradictionof normativity;neitherdoes it assert a normativealternative.Rather, it makes the contradictionthe basis for its representationof a paradoxicalreality in which the distinctions and limits of normativityprovide the means of fulfillment only throughtheirtemporarysuspensionand violation. This process drawson and opens the realm of the "real,"primordialdesire, which is within and yet beyond the self. From the perspectiveof this realm of pleasure and freedom, the componentsof normativity, of everyday life, of the empirical self, are mere contingencies. All forms of identity

Heterotopiaand the WinePoem 363 and distinctionare the ideal projectionsof a lack seeking to constituteitself as a whole. For this reason, the wine poem's moments of affirmationand subversion cannot be Its reaffirms,yet it also exposes and relativizes.In other words, separated. transgression it is ironicandcan be so becauseit is an aestheticperformance need have no practical that but is instead valued for its strikingeffects. Nevertheless, Abu Nuwas's consequences wine poem sustains and perfects, as a representation, heterotopiathat normativity the but cannotcomprise. implies

NOTES Author'snote: I thankthe following people for commentson andcriticismof versions of thispaper:Carole RachanaKamtekar, ElisabethKendall,LalehKhalili,Ibrahim Hillenbrand, Muhawi,JaroslavStetkevych,Yasir Suleiman,G. J. H. van Gelder. 1Ibn Hazm, Tawq al-Hamama, ed. Ihsan Abbas (Tunis: Dar al-Ma'arif al-'Ilmiyya, 1992), 260 (my translation).See also idem, The Ring of the Dove, trans.A. J. Arberry(London:Luzac and Company,1953), 233. 2For Abu Nuwas's biography,see Ewald Wagner,Abu Nuwas (Wiesbaden:Franz Steiner, 1965). The most comprehensivestudy of Abu Nuwas's wine poetry and its relationshipto the Arabic poetic traditionis in Phillip Kennedy, The Wine Song in Classical Arabic Poetry (Oxford: ClarendonPress, 1997). Kennedy discusses previous studies of Abu Nuwas's wine poetryin his introduction. 3The wine poetry of Abu Nuwas is similar in this respect to other "transgressive" culturalforms. "The process of symbolic inversion,far from being a residual category of experience, is its very opposite. What is socially peripheralis often symbolically central, and if we ignore or minimize inversionand other forms of culturalnegation we often fail to understandthe dynamics of symbolic processes generally":BarbaraA. in Babcock, "Introduction," TheReversible World,ed. BarbaraA. Babcock (Ithaca,N.Y.: CornellUniversity Press, 1978), 32. in 4I use the term "heterotopia" a differentsense from that of its original appearancein Foucault's 1967 lecture "Des Espaces Autres,"publishedposthumously:see Michel Foucault, "Of Other Spaces,"trans.Jay Miskowiec, Diacritics 16 (1986): 22-27. For an analysis of Foucault's use of this term, see B. Gennochio, "Discourse,Discontinuity,Difference: The Question of 'Other' Spaces,"in PostmodernCities and Spaces, ed. S. Watsonand K. Gibson (Oxford:Blackwell, 1995), 35-46. 5The notion of "liminality"was developed by the anthropologistArnold van Gennep to denote the transitional phase between two fixed identities in social ritualsof passage: see Arnold van Gennep, The Rites of Passage, trans. Monika B. Vizedom and GabrielleL. Caffee (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960). In the liminal phase, identityis suspended,and the subjectof the ritualis "neitherhere nor there,betwixt and between all fixed points of classification":Victor Turner,Dramas, Fields and Metaphors: SymbolicAction in HumanSociety (Ithaca,N.Y.: CornellUniversityPress, 1974), 232. Turneracknowledgesthe link between ritualliminalityand the effects createdby symbolic inversionin aestheticforms like the wine poem: see idem, "Comments Conclusions," Babcock,ReversibleWorld, and in 287. Fromthe perspectiveof social stratification, these sorts of aesthetic representations be linked to what Bakhtin calls "grotesquerealism,"the vulgar, can folk humor:see MikhailBakhtin,Rabelais and His World,trans.Helene bodily,earthynatureof carnivalesque Iswolsky (Bloomington: IndianaUniversity Press, 1984), 18 ff. Thus, Stallybrassand White designate the culturalrealm createdby the high culturalappropriation grotesquerealism as the "hybridgrotesque":see of Peter StallybrassandAllon White, ThePolitics and Poetics of Transgression(Ithaca,N.Y.: CornellUniversity see Press, 1986), 193. On van Gennepianliminalityin the pre-Islamic qasTda, SuzanneStetkevych,TheMute ImmortalsSpeak (Ithaca,N.Y.: CornellUniversityPress, 1993), chap. 1. 6A numberof literarygenres can be regardedas of this type, such as the poetry and narratives mujiin of (debauchery),some varietiesof ghazal (love poetry), hijai'(insultpoetry), works such as the Bukhal' (misers) of al-Jahizand the Maqamat works, "BanO Sasan"rogue poetry,and so forth. 7It should be noted that the investigationof Abu Nuwas's wine poetry as an aesthetic manipulationof normativeselfhood is to be distinguishedfrom the attemptto uncoverAbu Nuwas's own psychology from his poetry,as undertakenmost notably in 'Abbas Mahmudal-'Aqqad,Abu Nuwas al-Hasan ibn Hani' (Beirut:

364 YaseenNoorani
Dar al-Kitabal-Arabi, 1968), and Muhammadal-Nuwayhi,Nafsiyat Abi Nuwas (Cairo:Maktabatal-Khanji, 1970). Franz Steiner, 1988), 8Ewald Wagner,ed., Diwan Abi Nuwas al-Hasan b. Hani' al-Hakami (Stuttgart: vol. 3, no. 257; also, Ahmad Abd al-Majid al-Ghazali, ed., Diwan Abi Nuwas al-Hasan ibn Hani' (Cairo: of Matbaat Misr, 1953), 202. All translations Abu Nuwas's poetryarebased on volume 3 of Wagner'sedition; al-Ghazali'sedition, however,is more widely available. 9Al-Jahiz, "Kitmanal-Sirr," in Rasa' il al-Jahiz, ed. Abd al-Salam Harun, 4 vols. (Cairo: Maktabat al-Khanji,1964), 1:142. Ibn t0Athar al-Muqaffa',ed. 'Umar Abu al-Nasr(Beirut:Dar Maktabat al-Hayat,1966), 335. Althoughthe attribution this work to Ibn al-Muqaffa'is most likely false, it serves my purposein illustratingnormative of moraldiscourse.I thankG. J. H. van Gelderfor drawingthis to my attention. 11Al-Adab al-Kabir, in ibid., 301. 146. 12Al-Jahiz, "Kitman," 13Norbert Elias, The CivilizingProcess, trans.EdmundJephcott(Oxford:Blackwell, 1994), 452-53. 142-43. "Kitman," 14Al-Jahiz, 15Ibid,140-41. Diwan Abi Nuwas, vol. 3 (hereafter, Wagner),poem 33; al-Ghazali,DiwanAbiNuwas (hereafter, 16Wagner, al-Ghazali), 161. '7Wagner, poem 165; al-Ghazali, 159. poem 160; al-Ghazali,99. l8Wagner, 19Wagner, poem 54; al-Ghazali,695. 141. "Kitman," 20AI-Jahiz, 21Wagner, poem 52; al-Ghazali,71. 22Wagner, poem 114; al-Ghazali, 139. "Kitman,"141. The word "sirr"can also designate a person's soul or the interioressence of 23A1-Jahiz, something. 24Wagner. he (debauchery)literature, 25AlthoughAbu Nuwas is famous nowadaysfor this common motif of mujiCn does not stand out among his contemporariesfor it. For examples from Abu Nuwas (aside from the one discussed later), see Jamel Bencheikh, "Poesies Bachiques d'Abu Nuwas,"Bulletin d'ttudes Orientales 18 (1963-64): 62-64. See also J. S. Meisami, "ArabicMujunPoetry:The LiteraryDimension,"in Verseand the Fair Sex, ed. FrederickDe Jong (Utrecht:M. Th. HoutsmaStichting, 1993), 8-30. 26GeorgesBataille, Erotism,trans.MaryDalwood (San Francisco:City Lights Books, 1986), 17. the 27Thedescriptionof wine is traditionally centerpieceof wine poetry;its mainmotifs are alreadypresent in the pre-Islamic poems in which wine-drinkingappearsas an autonomousepisode. Abu Nuwas does not significantly alter these motifs. Rather,the interest lies in how he fixes the description within a logic of desublimationthatinvertsand replicatesthe logic of normativediscourses.For wine poetrybeforeAbu Nuwas and a thoroughand insightfulevaluationof Abu Nuwas's formaland thematicachievementsin the contextof the tradition,see Kennedy,WineSong. 28Wagner, poem 21; al-Ghazali,4. 29Ibid. 30Wagner, poem 150; al-Ghazali, 180. movement;it 31GeorgesBataille has remarkedthat "a transgressionis not the same as a back-to-nature suspends a taboo without suppressingit." The wine poem makes nature lie in the transgressionitself. See Bataille, Erotism,36. 32Wagner, poem 211; al-Ghazali,62. 33Steinersuggests that taboos should be understoodin terms of danger and power: see Franz Steiner, Taboo(London:Cohen and West, 1956), 20-21, 116, 146-47. He also considers that "[o]ne aspect of taboo undoubtedlyconsists in providing an idiom for the description of everything that matters in terms, quite ibid., 116. Cf. "The danger which is risked by boundarytransgressionis power. literally,of transgression": the to Those vulnerablemarginsandthose attackingforces which threaten destroygood orderrepresent powers inheringin the cosmos":MaryDouglass, Purityand Danger (London:RoutledgeandKeganPaul, 1970), 161. 34Wagner, poem 6; al-Ghazali,704. poem 24; al-Ghazali,22. 35Wagner, 36Wagner, poem 33; al-Ghazali, 162.

Heterotopiaand the WinePoem 365

37Wagner, poem 103; al-Ghazali,73. 38Cf.al-'Ibri'sgloss on Aristotle'sdefinitionof the soul. "Thesoul is a vital, incorporeal, knowing, radiant, subtle (latTf),self-animatedessence (jawhar)":al-'Ibri, "MaqalaMukhtasarafi al-Nafs al-Bashariyya"in MaqalatFalsafiyya, ed. Louis Cheikhoet al. (Cairo:Dar al-Arab, 1985), 80. 39Wagner, poem 9; al-Ghazali, 13. 40Wagner, poem 3; al-Ghazali,696. 41See Bencheikh, "Po6siesBachiques,"38-40, for examples of this theme. 42Wagner, poem 67; al-Ghazali, 109. poem 113; al-Ghazali, 183. 43Wagner, 44Wagner, poem 266; al-Ghazali,32. 45Bataille,Erotism, 110. It is of interest in this regardto consider the rhetoricof oral narratives,such as and AlfLayla wa Layla, where weddingnights are habituallyrecountedin termsof the artillerybombardment conquestof a fortress. 46Wagner, poem 8; al-Ghazali, 118. 47Thesefeaturesappearfrequentlyin Abu Nuwas's wine poetry: see, in particular, Wagner,poems 3, 103, 294; al-Ghazali,48, 73, 696. poem 268; al-Ghazali, 18. 48Wagner, 49See the discussion of this poem in Kennedy,WineSong, 42-43. 50For more on the Abbasid panegyric, see Stefan Sperl, Mannerism in Arabic Poetry (Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press, 1989); Suzanne Stetkevych, The Poetics of Islamic Legitimacy (Bloomington: IndianaUniversityPress, 2002). 51Wagner, poem 278; al-Ghazali, 126. 52Meisami,"ArabicMujunPoetry,"16. See also the discussion and translationof this poem in Kennedy, WineSong, 65-73. Abu al-FadlIbrahim 53Consider "Mu'allaqa" Imru'al-Qays in Diwan Imri' al-Qays, ed. Muhammad the of his (Cairo:Daral-Maarif,n.d.), 8-26. In lines 10 and 11, the poet recountsslaughtering camel for the "virgins," In among whom is his paramour. lines 33 and 34, he gives anothermistress oryx eyes and neck of a gazelle. In line 59, he likens the oryx cows he is huntingto "virginsin long-fringedgowns."See also the discussion of the beloved/gazelle motif in Kennedy,WineSong, 74-81. 54Cf."I saw the nights lying in wait for my (life) time/So I pounced upon my pleasuresin the way thatFate pounces":Wagner,poem 114; al-Ghazali, 139. 55JohnN. Mattock, "Descriptionand Genre in Abu Nuwas," Quaderni di Studi Arabi 5-6 (1987-88): 528-40. 56Wagner, poem 101; al-Ghazali,28. 57Wagner. 58Bencheikh,"Po6sies Bachiques,"68, says of "le personnagebachique d'Abu Nuwas": "Le plaisir qu'il recherchen'est plus seulementune forme d'6vasion mais une participationharmonieuseaux joies profondes de l'univers." the 59Particularly closing lines, which are normallyunderstoodas rejectingthe Mu'tazili doctrinethat the grave sinner(fdtsiq)cannotenterparadise. 60Wagner, poem 1; al-Ghazali,6. 61Fora discussion of the poem's polemical techniques within the context of (lampoon) poetry, see hijdit Kennedy,WineSong, 188-92. 62Cf. "[T]hroughthe excess in him, that God whom we should like to shape into an intelligible concept never ceases, exceeding this concept, to exceed the limits of reason":Bataille, Erotism,40-41. 63Ireferhere to numerouswine poems thatinterpolatefamous verses of love poetry as songs performedat drinkingparties. in 64Idrawhere on Nietzsche's accountof Dionysian art:see FriedrichNietzsche, "TheBirth of Tragedy," The Basic Writingsof Nietzsche, trans.WalterKaufmann(New York:Modem Library,1968), 59-60 ff. 65Stallybrassand White, Poetics and Politics of Transgression, 201. It should be noted that Stallybrassand White derive their mechanismfor the formationof class self-conception from Elias and locate much of their analysis in the cultureof the 17th-century English court. 66See Ibn 'Abd Rabbih, al-'Iqd al-Farid, ed. 'Abd al-Majid al-Tarhini,9 vols. (Beirut: Dar al-Kutub al-'Ilmiyya, 1987), 3:278-79. 67Wagner, poem 28; al-Ghazali,91.

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68Wagner, poem 250; al-Ghazali, 193. 69For the motifs connected with the social status of the poet's companions, see Bencheikh, "Podsies Bachiques,"66-67, and Kennedy,WineSong, 209-14. 70Norbert Elias, The CourtSociety, trans.EdmundJephcott(Oxford:Basil Blackwell, 1983), 241. 71Ibid.,225. 72Withrespect to the idealization of pre-Islamic Arabia, it is interestingto consider Abu Nuwas's relato tionship to one of the premierartifactsof this trend, the "Lamiyyatal-'Arab,"attributed the brigandpoet al-Shanfara.This poem, a manifesto of the marginal,anti-culturalethos associated in Abbasid times with the desert Arabs, was redacted-or, accordingto some accounts, forged-by Abu Nuwas's mentor,Khalaf al-Ahmar.On this poem, see Stetkevych,MuteImmortals,chap. 4. 73MichelFoucault,TheHistory of Sexuality,trans.RobertHurley(New York:RandomHouse, 1978), 1:48.