I picked up Total Abuse because I’ve always been drawn to Whitehouse, and I was curious about Peter Sotos’s role in that world. I’ve been into harsh noise and power electronics for a while now. As harsh as that music is, I find comfort in its cacophony — there’s something honest in how it refuses to smooth anything over. I figured if Sotos’s writing carried that same intensity, it might be worth exploring.
Total Abuse is a collection of Sotos’s early writings from 1984 to 1995. It pulls from his notorious zine Pure and includes essays, fragments, and obsessive monologues that deal almost exclusively with sexual violence, exploitation, and the media’s role in presenting (and feeding on) that violence. The tone is often voyeuristic, cold, and written from the perspective of perpetrators or passive observers.
It wasn’t the subject matter that unsettled me. I already expected the graphic content and a total lack of moral boundaries. What surprised me was how monotonous it all felt. The writing loops through one sadistic scenario after another without much variation. There’s no real arc or evolution — just a constant droning return to the same obsessions. It feels like it’s trying to provoke, but without offering anything deeper than the provocation itself. After a while, the shock wears off, and all that’s left is repetition.
I’ll let this quote from the book say the rest for me:
tw: child s/a
Child abuse is a sublime pleasure. All the great extremes — genital torture, forced unlubricated rape, butchering; all these pleasures and more reach their pinnacle when the victim is a small child. The orifices are extremely tight and usually virgin, an absolute joy to mangle, rip and violate. The pained screams ring more shrill, more empassioned, unhempered from years of growing up fat and jaded. Virgin territory brings the fresh cries and intense reactions of crushed and forever retarded innocence.
Might write more in regards to Marquis de Sade... or not.... I’m lazy.