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On the title page of the Englishman Thomas Hobbes‘ state-theoretical work Leviathan from 1651, we see the personified sovereign who rules over cities and land and their inhabitants. His body consists of the people who have consented to the social contract. In his hands he holds a sword and crosier, the symbols of temporal and spiritual power. The image is captioned with a quote from the Book of Job (41:25 EU): „No power on earth is comparable to his“.
Today, we are tempted to regard this image and the understanding of state power on which it is based, as presented by Thomas Hobbes in this important work of Western political philosophy, as outdated and paternalistic. It is difficult to rediscover in Hobbes‘ words and images the Western understanding of the state based on the liberal democratic order. The book TextTäter – Knast oder Krieg by Ronny Ritze, published by Garamond Verlag in spring 2018, directs our gaze to a subsystem of the state in which we can still encounter the Leviathan today in an unmediated and undisguised way – the prison.
Author and trainer for therapeutic and creative writing Ronny Ritze travelled through German prisons for his book. The result is the first part of a two-volume book project, TextTäter , which is dedicated to young offenders under the title „Childhood and Youth“. Volume 2 of the project, which has been announced for October 2018, will then focus on „Youth and Adulthood“.
For this first volume, texts were written by the young offenders and by Ritze himself as part of writing workshops with young offenders in various prisons. TextTäter comprises the results of these workshops and thus provides an insight into the lives of juvenile and adolescent offenders.
The flow of the book meanders between Ritze’s text and the prisoners‘ texts. Through these breaks and changes, the book succeeds in continuously changing the perspective and level of reflection, without Ritze succumbing to the temptation of wanting to explain or even analyse the view of the „offender texts“ through his own contributions. Inside and outside sometimes disappear in the text sequences and are then emphasised again. The world on this side and on the other side of the fences and walls blur into one another and are irreconcilably juxtaposed elsewhere.
This flow of text is interrupted by two interviews. The former prison warden, lawyer and author Thomas Galli and the gangster rapper Alexander Terboven open up further internal and external perspectives on dealing with delinquency and on prison – but also on their own artistic and literary approach to these topics.
The breadth of the authorship, the different formats of the texts and the abrupt changes of perspective associated with them create a pull that connects the text fragments. Perhaps it is precisely this fragmented approach to the prison that gives this volume its particular breadth of reflection. It conveys to us that an understanding of the total prison system with its absolute claim to validity vis-à-vis those subjected to it must be gained less through explanation and description than through personal experience.
And so we are suddenly confronted with Leviathan when Galli advises lawyers in an interview: „You have to view the prison system as a huge, disturbed person who has massive self-esteem problems, is paranoid and obsessive and to a certain extent sadomasochistic. You always have to make this person feel that they are right.“
He may appear sick and attacked here, the leviathan – psychologised and analysed. Unsettled by his own claim to absoluteness towards the offender, in an environment that no longer seems accustomed to the assertion of such claims, he seems ripe for the couch. But it is unmistakably him, the sovereign. And it is unmistakably the people who – sometimes more, sometimes less ashamed of it – grant him this claim, although they are often all too aware of his shortcomings.
Reason, which hopes for resocialisation – as we also read in this book – speaks against locking people up in prisons with the aim of preventing them from reoffending. Alternatives to prison are widely discussed. So abolish prisons? Ritze also addresses this question to juvenile prisoners in the book. The more or less unanimous answer: yes, yes, but what comes next?
„No power on earth is comparable to his“ is Hobbes‘ motto for his sovereign. And no alternative seems comprehensive enough to replace the total prison system. Giving up the prison simply means giving up state sovereignty (vulgo state control) not only over the individual as such, but also over the very individual who has challenged this sovereignty through their actions. Therein lies the fundamental realisation: we would have to create a sovereign that is neither paranoid nor compulsive. We would have to give up prison, even though there is no alternative to it.