Modern torture requires a rhetoric of denial while premodern torture was public display

Evidence

My argument here is that “torture” as now used in the law is a form of cruelty that liberal societies do not approve of. That’s the main reason why modern authorities typically generate a rhetoric of public denial—of disclaiming that “torture” has actually taken place within their domain of responsibility (“it was the unauthorized activity of undisciplined officials”), or of claiming that what appears to be “torture” is really something less reprehensible (“reasonable pressure”). This rhetoric is an important element in the public culture of modern liberalism, and it generates an air of secrecy around the subject—and therefore an air of “exposure” when incidents of torture are “made public.” In premodern societies of the kind Foucault called Classical, “torture” was carried out unapologetically and in public. It was the object not of exposure but of display. … The rhetoric of denial, which is the other side of a rhetoric of accusation, is typical of modern or modernizing governments, and is linked to a liberal sensibility regarding pain. — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular, 509

Categorization

• XREF: Contrasts with the public theatrical cruelty of premodern punishment described in Foucault’s Discipline and Punish, which I’ve read on the public spectacle of punishment.
• SEED: The ‘rhetoric of denial’ as a hallmark of liberal state violence is worth an essay exploring how euphemism (‘reasonable pressure’) is itself a confession of moral standards — denial as the other side of accusation.