From Eduardo Salibrato, Totalitarian Lust from Salo to Abu Gharib South Central Review 24.1 (2007) 174-182 2007

Torture is a microcosm. Hence, its considerable theological, philosophical, and political value. The physical and chemical techniques of destruction of the person—from the grappling irons and mutilations put into practice by the Holy Christian Brotherhood, to the electrical charges, drugs, violent contusions, prolonged asphyxia, aggressive sensorial stimulation, and sexual violation practiced in centers of military intelligence throughout the Cold War—in short, what we see before us today, is not, as the institutional watchdogs of human rights are inclined to proclaim, the vision of an inexpressible and incomprehensible horror. It is the exact opposite: the calculated expression, at once rational and necessary, that defines modernity, the global capitalist system, or Western civilization as such. This is the expression that reveals the profound logos of modernity. It is, to be precise, the same expression that once led the Marquis de Sade to explore, in his memories of imprisonment, the nexus between torture and civilizing rationality.(174)