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Obituary melanie niedermeyer

29 February 2024

21 09 1988 – 01 2024

On the second day of the parrhesia project in Schwarzau Prison, participant Ivana Landmann handed us a letter from her cellmate. In the letter, inmate Melanie Niedermeyer urgently asks us to allow her to participate in the project, even though she did not register in time. She says that it was only through the reporting of her cellmate that she understood what the parrhesia project is about. The Matrix and the biographical work and talking about her life helped her to come to terms with the suicide of her brother, the death of her parents and her grandmother. All of them died during her prison sentences, and she was unable to say goodbye to any of her relatives or attend any of their funerals.

She very much hoped to get a place in the project.

It doesn't take long to officially register Melanie for the project and after the lunch break she is already arriving at the cultural hall of the Schwarzau correctional institution together with the other participants.

Melanie Niedermeyer's contribution to the project is enriching. From creating her matrix and her biography, to the conscientious listing of crimes she has committed and suffered, to speech activity, in which she reads her criminal record, she displays the courage of a parrhesiast: »Tell me about yourself» taps into a deep-rooted human need –»Telling all‘ is then: telling the truth without hiding any part o fit, without hiding it behind anything.« (Michel Foucault)

also criminal files, pleadings, minutes, etc., testify to some extent to “the other biography” of the offender and they contain the verdict according to the laws which have been applied and their interpretation in the individual case of the lawbreaker in their wording. Contrary to what is generally assumed, 95% of the criminal records of the women involved cite petty crimes such as simple theft (acquisitive crime) and not serious offenses and violations of the Narcotics Act (BtMG). Rather, it is the sum of these petty offenses or non-compliance with court orders that leads to years of life in prison. The specific naming of the offenses committed is important in order to uncover systemic errors and, at the same time, to formulate a kind of “counterstatement” based on precisely those facts that were originally intended to justify the conviction.

Michel Foucault proposes the term “speech activity” as a translation of the Greek term parrhesia to differentiate truth speaking and the commitment it involves from the common forms of utterance with which people identify. In a clear distinction from the linguistic “speech act” according to Austin and Searle, Foucault is particularly concerned with the relationship between the parrhesiastic speaker and what is uttered.

comes from the Greek and means “freedom of speech” or “talking about everything”. It is the key theoretical concept of the eponymous project PARRHESIA: THE RISKY ACTIVITY OF SPEAKING THE TRUTH, which is based on Michel Foucault’s remarks on parrhesiastic speaking the truth. Drawing on the ancient tradition of truth speaking that can be traced back to Euripides, Foucault defines parrhesia as “a kind of verbal activity where the speaker has a speciﬁc relation to truth through frankness, a certain relationship to his own life through danger, a certain type of relation to himself or other people through criticism (self-criticism or criticism of other people), and a speciﬁc relation to moral law through freedom and duty. More precisely, parrhesia is a verbal activity in which a speaker expresses his personal relationship to truth, and risks his life because he recognises truth-telling as a duty to improve or help other people (as well as himself). In parrhesia, the speaker uses his freedom and chooses frankness instead of persuasion, truth instead of falsehood or silence, the risk of death instead of life and security, criticism instead of ﬂattery, and moral duty instead of self-interest and moral apathy.” (Source: Michel Foucault, The Meaning and Evolution of the Word Parrhesia in Discourse & Truth: The Problematisation of Parrhesia, 1999, 6 lectures at the University of California at Berkeley, CA, Oct.–Nov. 1983. https://foucault.info/parrhesia/foucault.DT1.wordParrhesia.en/)

a pre-printed catalogue of terms, both positively and negatively contextualisable, which are selected and assigned to the respective stages of life, and enable the women involved to provide information that is not emotionally charged or judgemental about traumatic experiences that had previously been impossible to communicate.

a biographical protocol that uses the Matrix Method to collect facts as soberly as possible which is devoid of emotional suggestion. From the resulting collages of words the biographers formulate sentences in the present tense, so that the events of the past are brought into the present.