Members - About the individual junior scientists

• University of Manouba
• Faculté des Lettres, des Arts et des Humanités Tunisia
• Mail: aouadi_chahine@hotmail.com

Career

Studies of German Language and Literature at the Faculté des Lettres, des Arts et des Humanités of Manouba/ Tunisia. 2011 Master's degree with master's thesis on "Signs of the Incident in Thomas Bernhard's Drama The Power of Habit. Work as interpreter and translator. German teacher in various institutions. Since 2013 lecturer at the Faculty of Philology of the University of La Manouba.

Research project

Basing myself on dramas that deal with the themes of responsibility, justice and culture of memory, I would like to explore the influence of politics in my research project. Using political plays by Tunisian playwrights before and after January 14, 2011, I will try to show the extent to which political influence is of particular cultural and social relevance, and to interrogate any related manifestations of dictatorship, especially in terms of their close connection to the people and their everyday lives, which is relatively easy to ascertain in the sources I have chosen, since they are conceived as the in-depth description of what happened.

• Dr. Ibrahim Abdella
• University of Al-Minia/ Egypt
• Faculty of Linguistics (Al Alsun)
• Department of German Studies
• Mail: ibrahim_abdella@hotmail.com

Career

Studied German language and literature at Al-Azhar University and Egyptology at Cairo University. Since 1998 senior assistant for German Studies at the University of Al-Minia/Egypt. 2003 Doctorate at the University of Duisburg-Essen.

Publications on the subject

• A comparative study of the social crises between the short stories Nachts schlafen die Ratten doch by Wolfgang Borchert and Nazra (German title Ein Blick) by Yusuf Idris, Al Alsun Journal of the Faculty of Languages (Al-Alsun) at Ain Shams University, Cairo 2009.
• Comparative study between the works Aquis submersus by Theodor Storm and al-Haram (The Forbidden) German title: Die Sünderin by Yusuf Idris. Philology journal of the Faculty of Languages (Al-Alsun) at Ain Shams University, Cairo 2011
• The culture of memory in Arab countries, its sociology and philosophy as well as its identity formation from the perspective of intercultural German studies, Journal of Arts and human Sciences, Al Minia, 2013.

Research project

My research project deals with the representation of experiences of injustice and human rights violations in modern Arabic literature. In recent decades, writers such as Nagib Mahfuz, who is also well-known in the Occident, have written novels that attempt to depict the socio-political conditions of life in Egypt and the Middle East, which are characterized by human rights violations and experiences of injustice. My project is initially concerned with examining which novels and which writers depict the socio-political conditions under a dictatorship, as well as determining a characteristic time period. Using an example such as Sonalla Ibrahim's novel The Committee, the treatment of social, cultural and political power relations under dictatorship will then be analyzed in detail.

• Dr. Mahmoud Bassiouni
• Cluster of Excellence "Normative Orders"/ Uni Frankfurt
• E-mail: mahmoud.bassiouni@normativeorders.net

Career

Apr. 2001 - Jun. 2005: Diploma Studies: Political Science, Law, Islamic Studies Goethe University Frankfurt. Oct. 2002 - Jun. 2003: B.A. Studies: Politics and International Relations University of Southampton. Apr. 2006 - Jun. 2011: PhD in Political Science Goethe University Frankfurt. Oct. 2012 - present: research assistant to Prof. Dr. Rainer Forst in the Leibniz Research Group "Transnational Justice". Oct. 2012 - present: research associate at the Institute for Islamic Studies Goethe University Frankfurt, responsible for conception and development of an interdisciplinary competence center for Islamic law. Dec. 2009 - Oct 2012: research associate at the Cluster of Excellence "Formation of Normative Orders" at Goethe University Frankfurt. Research in the projects "Transnational Justice and Democracy" and "Human Rights, Justice and Tolerance" under the direction of Prof. Dr. Rainer Forst. Since 2009: Member of the Society for Arab-Islamic Law (GAIR), German Working Group on the Middle East (DAVO), German Society for Philosophy (DGPhil).

Research project

The research project deals with the question of the justification of human rights and argues that human rights can only be made plausible, both in terms of their function and their content, if they are understood as socially constructed institutions that protect human beings from specific dangers that have occurred or can still occur in a society. In other words, it should be shown that human rights represent normative responses to specific experienced practices or conditions and are accordingly subject to constant change. This should not only make it possible to clarify the evolutionary character of human rights, but also enable us to understand the emergence of already existing human rights.

• Dr. Bettina Bock
• University of Halle
• E-mail bettina.bock@germanistik.uni-halle.de

Background

Studied German language and literature, psychology and comparative literature at the Universities of Leipzig and Oslo (Norway). 2008-2011 doctoral studies at the University of Leipzig, scholarships from the Studienstiftung and the Gerda Henkel Foundation. 2013 PhD at the University of Halle-Wittenberg with a text- and discourse-linguistic thesis on the texts of unofficial employees of the GDR State Security. Since October 2011 research assistant at the Institute of German Studies (Department of Linguistics) at the University of Halle. Since March 2014 2nd chairwoman of the Arbeitskreis Linguistische Pragmatik (ALP) e.V.

Publications on the topic

• (2013): "Blind writing" in the service of GDR state security. A text- and discourse-linguistic study of texts written by unofficial collaborators (= series Sprache - Politik - Gesellschaft, Vol. 9). Bremen;
• (2013) Disappeared words? Terms of GDR socialism and the secret vocabulary of state security after 1989/90. In: Hajo Diekmannshenke/Thomas Niehr (eds.): Öffentliche Wörter. Hanover.
• (2011) Ed., together with Ulla Fix and Steffen Pappert: Politische Wechsel - Sprachliche Umbrüche. Berlin;

Research projects

My research focuses on language and politics/political language use: in particular, I examine language use in dictatorships and situations of political and social upheaval. Following on from linguistic studies, especially on language use in the GDR, I am particularly interested in the contrastive perspective: be it the comparison of German dictatorships and upheavals with the situation in Arab countries or the comparison of linguistic upheavals in Eastern European countries. In particular, I take a discourse-linguistic approach, i.e. I analyze the order of discourses and the distribution of research and power as it can be inferred from linguistic regularities. Political (discourse) semantics, especially the use of buzzwords and banner words and the study of ideologically influenced words, are just as much a part of my work as argumentation analysis.

• Dr. Khaled Chaabane
• Faculté des Lettres, des Arts et des Humanités de Manouba
• Rosa Luxemburg Foundation
• Mail : khaldoun9@yahoo.fr

Career

Studied law at the Faculty of Law in Tunis. Studied sociology, communication sciences, political sciences and philosophy at the Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster. Doctorate on "The emergence of Tunisian capitalism and the role of the state in post-colonial development." From 1990 to 1996 research assistant at the Friedrich Ebert Foundation in Tunis. 1996 to 2013 senior assistant at the Faculté des Lettres, des Arts et des Humanités in Manouba/Tunisia. 2008-2011 head of the language department there, 2011-2013 member of the faculty's academic advisory board. Since 2014 head of the pilot project of the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation: 'Scientific Cooperation North Africa'.

Research project

The research project within the project "Responsibility, Justice and Culture of Remembrance" deals with the topic: "Between Adaptation and Resistance - The Role of Tunisian Trade Unions under the Rule of Bourgiba and Ben Ali". The focus on the Tunisian trade union UGTT (Union Générale Tunisienne du Travail) stems from the fact that this mass organization played a significant role both in the national liberation of the country from the French colonial yoke and in the removal of Ben Ali's corrupt dictatorship. In "post-revolutionary" Tunisia, too, it is trying to exert influence on important decisions for the country. However, relations between the Tunisian trade unions and the ruling apparatus have always been full of conflict. On the one hand, the UGTT has tended to represent the interests of its members - workers, employees and civil servants - but on the other, it has been subject to government attempts at interference and even reprisals. It was not always able to maintain its independence from the ruling party. Very often, it was condemned to perform a balancing act between the expectations of its members and those of the regime. This dialectical relationship between the representation of trade union interests and subordination to the requirements of the despotic state is the subject of my research paper.

• Anouar Cherif
• Sidi Bouzid
• E-mail: nawara24@ymail.com

Career

Studies of German at the Instiut Supérieur des Langues Appliquées aux Affaires et au Tourisme in Moknine (Monastir). Completion of master's degree in 2013 at the faculty of Manouba. Since September 2009, German teacher at the high school Ibn Arafa Souk Jedid (Sidi Bouzid). Vice president of the Tunisian German Teachers Association (TDV). Dissertation project at the FLAH Manouba/ Tunisia.

Research project

My research project aims to study the socio-political responsibility of women in Tunisian society from independence to the present day. The spotlight here is on her fundamental role or her effective contribution to the development of the state. However, if one considers the situation of women before independence, one comes to the conclusion that they were strongly tied to the home and family and did not participate in social developments. It cannot be denied that without the liberation of women initiated at an early stage, women today would not have been able to assume responsibilities in the service of the state. Tahar Haddad (b. 1899 in Tunis, d. 1935) was one of the best-known Tunisian writers, scholars and reformers in the field of women's emancipation. He advocated for women's rights in order to free women from oppression. In his famous early work "Our Woman in Islamic Law and Society", on which I am currently working, it was nevertheless stated that the state had to provide justice for women and give them extensive equality with men. Using this book as an example, my research interest then focuses on the history of women's liberation and its influence on the role of women up to the present day. Bourguiba, the first president of Tunisia, considered these emancipatory thoughts and put them into practice. Towards women's emancipation, since that time, women had to show a sense of responsibility and contribute to the development of the country. The question here, then, is how the situation of women has changed since then and to what extent their liberation has played a role in the development of the state. It is also necessary to ask what responsibilities women have had to bear since that time, what challenges they have faced and what achievements they have made.

• Dr. Sarhan Dhouib
• Institute of Philosophy
• University of Kassel
• Mail: dhouib@uni-kassel.de

Career

1992-1996 Studied philosophy at the University of Sfax (Tunisia). 1998-2000 Master's degree at the University of Paris 1 - Sorbonne. 2008 Doctorate on Schelling's philosophy of identity at the University of Bremen. 2008-2009 research assistant at the Georg Eckert Institute for International Textbook Research in Braunschweig. Since January 2010 research assistant at the Institute of Philosophy at the University of Kassel. In 2011 he was awarded the Goethe-Institut's Young Philosophy Prize. He has been a member of the Arab-German Young Academy of Sciences and Humanities since 2013. Main research interests: Theories of justice and human rights, political philosophy, German idealism, intercultural philosophy and contemporary Arab-Islamic philosophy.

Research project

My research project deals with the question of the connection between the cultural relativist justification of human rights and authoritarian states. It examines how the vague statement of "cultural identity" is often used in Islamic and Arab human rights declarations, which emerged under authoritarian Arab regimes, to deny the universality of human rights and to legitimize authoritarian social, cultural and political structures. The aim is to show how a critical examination of such declarations has already emerged in contemporary Arab philosophy. A critical examination of the "identity discourse" under the dictatorship and the period after the 2011 revolution in Tunisia and Egypt forms the condition for the possibility of the rule of law and the coming democracy. In a further step, a new strategy for the justification of human rights is considered, within which the experience of injustice plays an important role. For the experience of injustice can become constitutive for the promotion of the universality of human rights. In this context, coming to terms with the experience of injustice under dictatorship plays an important role: in philosophy, but also in literature and the arts.

• Dr. Franziska Dübgen
• Lichtenberg-Kolleg
• University of Göttingen
• E-mail: franziska.Duebgen@zentr.uni-goettingen.de

Background

Studied philosophy, political science and Italian at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin and the Università di Sassari, Italy, graduating with a Magister Artium. From 2007-2011 doctoral scholarship holder within the doctoral group "Normative Conditions of Development Cooperation" at the Frankfurt Cluster of Excellence "Normative Orders". This was followed by a stay as a visiting scholar at the New School for Social Research in New York at the invitation of Nancy Fraser. Since 2011 teaching assignments at the University of Kassel, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Goethe-Universität Frankfurt and Leuphana-Universität Lüneburg. At the beginning of 2012, she joined the Chair of Political Theory and Philosophy with Rainer Forst at Goethe University Frankfurt. Doctorate in philosophy with a dissertation on "Paradoxes of Justice. Transnational solidarity in a postcolonial world". From 2012 to 2013 Fellow in the research group "Cultures of Economics and Cultures of Sustainability" at the Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies e.V. From January 2014 Junior Fellow at the Lichtenberg-Kolleg in Göttingen.

Publications on the topic

• What is just? Characteristics of a transnational solidary politics, Frankfurt/M.: Campus 2014.
• Together with Ina Kerner: "Postkoloniale Theorien", in Gröschner, Rolf; Kapust, Antje, Lembcke, Oliver W.(eds.): Wörterbuch der Würde, Bochum 2013, pp. 101-103.

Research project

My research project deals with possible forms of restorative justice against the background of past experiences of injustice. The question of justice is closely interwoven with the question of who is allowed to judge justice, i.e. the justified legal and moral actors. Moreover, the question of restorative justice also addresses the issue of the legitimate use of force within a political community. The mere identification of past injustice, i.e. the process of establishing the truth, does not yet provide parameters for how justice can be established in the face of past injustice. In the current international legal system, criminal law is the main applicable form of judging dictatorial violence and state-induced discrimination. My research approach aims to question the retributive politics of punishment in an international context and to look for alternative ways of restoring justice. To this end, I also draw comparatively on traditions of legal philosophy and theories of justice from non-Western, and in particular Arab, discourses.

• Dr. Mohamed Hachimi
• E-mail: elhachimimohamed@yahoo.fr

• Nadia El Ouerghemmi
• Institute of Political Science
• Damstadt University of Technology
• E-mail: ouerghemmi@pg.tu-darmstadt.de

Curriculum vitae

October 2007 to December 2012: Studies of Political Science and Public Law at the University of Trier. 2010/11: Studies of Political Science at the Faculté de Droit et de Science Politiques of the Université de Liège. 2012: Internship at the Orient Institute Beirut/ Lebanon. 2011: Internship at the Hessian Foundation for Peace and Conflict Research/ Frankfurt am Main in the focus area "Domination and Social Peace". Collaboration on the research project "Islamist movements in the context of changing opportunity structures". Since April 2013: research associate in the project "Legitimation through International Law and Legitimation of International Law" at the Cluster of Excellence "The Formation of Normative Orders" at the Technical University of Darmstadt.

Research project

My research project is dedicated to the question of the justice of mechanisms of dealing with the past in Tunisia and Egypt after 2011. In particular, the ideas of procedural justice associated with the transitional justice approach and the expectations of victims of past human rights violations will be contrasted. Already in the course of the first demonstrations, which covered large parts of Tunisia and Egypt in 2010 and 2011, justice could be identified as one of the main concerns of the citizens. Alongside social justice, justice for the victims of authoritarian practices was a central aspect of this demand. After the fall of both regimes, these issues of coming to terms with the past were declared a priority by the transitional governments within a very short time. This was concretized by the establishment of a variety of mechanisms from the repertoire of transitional justice (commissions of inquiry, judicial proceedings, compensation...). The fact that the design of these procedures turned out to be problematic and that they could not meet the expectations of the victims raised the question of possibilities and criteria for just reappraisal procedures. Answers to this question arise both from the approach itself and from the expectations and priorities of the victims. A comparison of these two ideas seems to be useful and is able to analyze contributions to empirical and theoretical debates about transferability and possibilities and limits of theory building in the field of transtional justice.

• Bilel Falhi
• Maknassi
• Tunisia
• E-mail: pelsparta@yahoo.fr

Career

Studied German language and literature at the Faculté des Lettres, des Arts et des Humanités of Manouba/ Tunisia. Master's degree in 2012. Worked as a German teacher in various institutions. 2004 to 2008: Member of the Tunisian Student Union UGET. Since 2006, member of the Young Social Democrats of the FDTL (Social Democratic Party of Tunisia), 2009-2012 Secretary General of the Young Social Democrats. 2009-2012 Member of the National Assembly of the FDTL. Since 2011, member of the "High Authority for the Realization of the Goals of the Revolution, Political Reform and Democratic Transition". Dissertation project at the FLAH Manouba/ Tunisia.

Research project

The research project within the project "Responsibility, Justice and Culture of Memory" deals with the topic of life under dictatorship and is to be titled Leaves from Student Memory. It reports on the experiences and adventures of a politically committed student who fought with his means against Ben Ali's regime and was politically persecuted and imprisoned as a result. Especially the experiences of injustice regarding the repressive measures on the part of the security apparatus are reported. Furthermore, a look is taken at the situation in Tunisia today, because the nature of the work of the Ministry of the Interior is still to be criticized.

• Dr. phil., Steffi Hobuß
• Leuphana University of Lüneburg -
• Institute for Philosophy and Art Studies
• E-mail: hobuss@uni-lueneburg.de

Career

Studied philosophy, German literature and German linguistics at the University of Hanover. 1994 University of Bielefeld, doctorate in philosophy. 1990 - 1994 Research assistant at the University of Bielefeld, Department of Philosophy. Since 1996 Research assistant at the Leuphana University of Lüneburg. 2009 and 2011 Teaching Award of the Leuphana University of Lüneburg. 2010 Visiting Professor for Memory Studies at Karlstads Universitet, Sweden. Since 2012 Member of the Management Committee of the COST Action IS1203 "In Search for Transcultural Memory in Europe" (2012-16). Since 2014 Vice Dean for Internationalization of the Faculty of Cultural Studies at Leuphana University Lüneburg.

Publications on the topic

2013 Memory Acts: Memory without Representation: Theoretical and Methodological Suggestions; 2011 Transnational Cultural Memory and Ethics. In: Transnational Cultural Memory. Special Issue of JAC (Journal of Aesthetics and Culture - Peer-Reviewed Online-Journal); 2010 German Memory Studies. The Philosophy of Memory from Wittgenstein and Warburg to Assmann, Welzer and Back again. In: Alexandre Dessingué, Ketil Knutsen, Ann Elisabeth Laksfoss Hansen (eds.): Flerstemte minner.- Stavanger, pp. 22-34; 2007 Publication: Steffi Hobuß and Ulrich Lölke (eds.): Erinnern verhandeln. Colonialism in the Collective Memory of Africa and Europe - Münster (Westf. Dampfboot) 2007.

Research project

Based on the arguments of Ludwig Wittgenstein, John L. Austin, Jacques Derrida and Johannes Fabian, the research project aims to bring together the concepts of (collective) memory culture, speech acts and performativity in order to assert the concept of memory acts for a theory of memory culture in intercultural contexts. Speaker positions and the question of responsibility play a central role in this. Analyzing the contextual uses of acts of remembrance not only makes it possible to overcome the dichotomy between the individual and the collective and between the national and the global, but also that between an understanding of history as the sum of existing events and collectively constructed memory. Such an approach makes it possible to analyze the dynamics of migrant women's memory, the connection between power, justice and the culture of memory, and the problem of intercultural and transcultural memory in the context of the question of old and new borders. The abandonment of the master narrative of "representation" allows the present and future of the negotiation, transmission and construction of memories to come into view, instead of seeing memory as exclusively focused on the past, and enables the development of a methodological approach to the investigation of the relationship between memory, truth and justice that has been lacking until now. At the same time, the first steps of the methodological approach of memory act research will be tested on current case studies from Tunisia and discussed and further developed with Tunisian researchers.

• Ali Jridi, M.A.
• FLAH University of Manouba
• E-mail: ali.jridi77@gmail.com

Career

Studied German literature at the University of Manouba (Tunis) with Maȋtrise degree (2008). From 2010 to 2012 Master's degree at the University of Manouba (Tunis) (major: German Literature) with a Master's thesis on "The female existence in modern literature - Maimuna in "Dam" by Messadi and Hanna in "Homo faber" by Max Frisch". From 2008 to 2013 lecturer in German language and literature at ISEAH (University of Tunis). Since 2013 lecturer of German language at FLAH Manouba. Since 2014, vice-president of the TGDV (Tunisian Association of Germanists and German Teachers).

Research Project

The focus of my research project is the thematization of the experiences of injustice and torture mechanisms in German-language 'exile literature' using the narrative works of the Syrian-German writer Rafik Schami as an example. On the basis of his literary production, the social, cultural and political dictatorship is analyzed. Here, the question is explored to what extent his works reflect life under dictatorship in Syria.

• Dr. phil. Andreas Jürgens
• Leuphana University of Lüneburg
• E-mail: andreas.juergens@leuphana.de

Career

Studied philosophy, cultural studies and German language and literature at the Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen, the University of Bremen and as a visiting student at the University of Gdańsk. After completing his Master's degree in 2006, he worked in the German Department "Human Rights and Cultures" of the European UNESCO Chair of Philosophy (Paris) at the University of Bremen until 2009. From 2007-2009 doctoral scholarship holder of the Central Research Funding of the University of Bremen. 2010 Doctorate in philosophy at the same university. At the beginning of 2010, research assistant in the research project "Aesthetics, Literature, and Literary Theory" led by Christoph Jamme as part of the multinational research network "The Impact of Idealism. The Legacy of Post-Kantian German Thought". Since 2011 research associate at Leuphana College, since 2012 associated with the Institute of Philosophy and Art Studies at Leuphana University Lüneburg. Andreas Jürgens is a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the "Revista Internazionale di Filosofia e Psicologia", the International Ernst Cassirer Society and the German Society for Philosophy. Publications include: Humanism and Cultural Criticism: Ernst Cassirer's Work in American Exile, Paderborn: Wilhelm Fink 2012; Wege in der Philosophie. History - Research - Law - Transculturality, ed. with Sarhan Dhouib, Weilerswist: Velbrück Wissenschaft 2011.

Publications on the topic

"Fall through the ages". Transhistory - On the work of Durs Grünbein. In: Myth - Spirit - Culture. FS zum 60. Geb. von Christoph Jamme, ed. with Kerstin Andermann, Paderborn: Wilhelm Fink 2013, pp. 349-359. Diktatur und ästhetische Autonomie: Zu Durs Grünbeins Gedichtband "Grauzone morgens" [lecture manuscript]. (Workshop "Leben in der Diktatur. Injustice and Responsibility", 09.-11.12.2013, Evangelische Akademie Hofgeismar b. Kassel).

Research project

My research project aims at a literary reflection on the connection between the experience of injustice and the culture of remembrance in writing. To this end, I am working on the early phase of the work of the contemporary German poet and essayist Durs Grünbein. Using the example of selected Grünbein poems and poetological essays from the 1980s and 1990s, I am interested in the artistic sedimentation of the author's experience of the change of lifeworld in the year of German reunification 1989. The interpretative hypothesis here is that Grünbein's characteristic method of poetically simultanizing historical layers of time and their historical-poetological contours as 'omnitemporality', 'discontinuous modernity' and 'transhistory' can be read as aesthetic transformations of the experience of dictatorship.

• Dr. Karim Khadhraoui
• ISLAI Béja - Tunisia
• E-mail: karim.khadhraoui@yahoo.de

Career

2000-2004 Studies of German at the University Institute of Languages in Tunis. 2005-2007 Master studies at the University of Manouba. 2013 PhD in Modern German Literature at the Free University of Berlin with a dissertation thesis on "Writing without a fixed abode - literary and sociological studies on 'migration literature'", DAAD scholarships. From 2005 to 2007 high school teacher for German. 2007-2010 lecturer for German language and regional studies at the University of Manouba. Since 2010 lecturer at the University Institute for Applied Languages and Informatics in Béja (Tunisia).

Research project

The representation of torture and experiences of injustice in Arabic 'torture or prison literature' forms the basis of my literary and cultural studies investigation. Two works from the Arab world available in German translation stand out here in particular: 'East of the Mediterranean' and 'Here and Now, East of the Mediterranean OnceAgain' by Abdalrachman Munif. His novels reflect on human humiliation, psychological and physical torture of various kinds, the community of prisoners, and also certain processes related to arrest. Here, the question is explored to what extent his literary production can be studied as a contribution from the perspective of memory culture. Among other things, the treatment of social, cultural and political power relations under the dictatorship will be analyzed. To this end, a comparison is made with German-language authors with regard to their life experiences in dictatorial regimes.

• Ina Khiari Hole
• Institut supérieur des sciences humaines de Médenine - Université Gabes
• Tunisia
• E-mail: ikhiariloch@yahoo.de

Career

Studies of Ethnology, Arabic and Islamic Studies at the University of Bayreuth. 2002 Master's thesis on "Tourism on Djerba/ Tunisia - On the relationship between tourists and local population". Since 2002 lecturer for German at the Institut supérieur des études technologiques (ISET) Djerba/ Tunisia. Since 2008 assistant at the Institut supérieur des sciences humaines (ISSH) Medenine/ Tunisia in the department: Applied German. Since 2010 doctoral studies at the Georg-August-University of Göttingen (Göttingen Graduate School of Humanities). Working title of the dissertation project: "Female Identity in Social Change - Comparative Interpretation of Biographical Texts from Southern Tunisia". Since 2012, coordinator of the Department of Applied German at ISSH Medenine.

Publications on the topic

• The Tunisian "Revolution for Freedom and Dignity". A background and field report on the causes of the popular uprising, in: Periplus. Yearbook of Non-European History, Volume 22 Change in the Arab World, 2012, pp. 13-31.
• Women in Tunisia between State Feminism and New Islamic Consciousness - The Headscarf as a Symbol of Islamism or Freedom?, in Human Law. Actes du colloque sur la pédagogie et la culture des droits de l'homme. Cottbus-Medenine 2013, Medenine, 2013, pp. 104-122.

Research project

My research project, which approaches the project "Responsibility, Justice and Culture of Memory" from the ethnological point of view, is part of my dissertation project, which deals with the individual female experience in relation to processes of social change in Tunisia. By means of textual and thematic field analysis (Interpretative Social Research according to Rosenthal), biographical interviews from southern Tunisia are evaluated. In these interviews, the interviewees report on a wide variety of experiences from their lives, including experiences of injustice during the Bourguiba and Ben Ali regimes. My research project asks how the interviewees remember these situations of experiencing injustice, i.e. how they present and deal with their experiences in the interview context. It also asks about the conclusions that can be drawn from the recounted memories in terms of the interplay between collective and individual, official and unofficial memory.

• Dr. Markus Kneer
• Philosophical-Theological University Münster
• University of Regensburg
• E-mail: markuskneer@gmx.de

Career

Studies of Catholic Theology (Diploma), Philosophy and Islamic Studies (Magister Artium) in Paderborn, Maynooth/Republic of Ireland and Münster. Doctorate in theology (2002) in Paderborn, since 2005: habilitation project on "The Concept of the Person in Christian-Islamic Dialogue" in Catholic Theology (since 2013 at the University of Regensburg, previously University of Münster), several research stays in Morocco and France, since 2011 lecturer at the Philosophical-Theological University of Münster, November 2013 guest lecturer at the University of Oran/Algeria.

Publications on the topic

• "Closed" or "Opened"? Muhammad Aziz Lahbabi's Islamic Cultural Philosophy and the Question of a Universal Humanism, in Marianne Heimbach-Steins, Rotraud Wielandt (eds.), What is Humanity? Interdisciplinary and Interreligious Perspectives. Würzburg 2008 (Judaism - Christianity - Islam; Bamberg Interreligious Studies, vol. 6) 25-41.
• Un personnalisme en Islam est-il possible? Sur la pensée de Muhammad Aziz Lahbabi, in: Bulletin des amis d'Emmanuel Mounier 99 (2010) 48-57.

Research Project

The research project I am pursuing deals with the question of how in the work of the Moroccan philosopher Mohamed Aziz Lahbabi the experience of colonialism is present and can serve as a hermeneutic key to his thought. The accusation against him is that with personalism he has imposed a Western discourse on Arab thought or Christianized Muslim thought. Lahbabi's critics do not ask why he chooses the personalist approach. It is clear from autobiographical texts and from his literary work that it is precisely the reflection on the experiences of injustice (also suffered by himself) that lead him to the question of the person, both in terms of personal identity and in terms of recognition of the person status of the colonized. In personalism, Lahbabi finds the tools to pose this question, to deepen it, and to offer solutions, especially with regard to the question of social justice. Ultimately, personalism also provides the basis for perceiving and asserting culture in its plurality.

• Dr. Mohamed Lachhab
• Institute for Literary Studies
• University Ibn Zohr, Agadir/ Morocco
• Email: mohamed.lachhab@zentr.uni-goettingen.de

Career

1992 to 1996 Studies of Philosophy at the University Dehar El Mehraz in Fes. 1997 to 2010 teacher of philosophy at high school. 2008 PhD on Habermas' theory of communicative action. Since 2010 lectureship in philosophy at the University Ibn Zohr in Agadir. Since 2014 as a fellow at the Lichtenberg-Kolleg in Göttingen. Research interests: Justice, political philosophy, ethics , philosophy of human rights and philosophy of language.

Publications on the topic

• Discourse ethics in Habermas "Theory of Communicative Action" (in Arabic) in: Dar Ward, Jordan2013.
• Deliberative Democracy and Human Rights in Habermas, in Culture, Identity and Human Rights: Transcultural Perspectives, edited by Sarhan Dhouib, Weilerswist: Velbrück Wissenschaft, 2012, pp. 240-254.
• Philosophy of Law in Habermas' Theory of Communicative Action", in: Journal of the Research Group "Philosophy of Law", Rabat 2009.

Research Project

In the research project "Responsibility, Justice and the Culture of Memory" I will work from a philosophical perspective on the concepts of "justice" and "responsibility". In doing so, I will refer to the latest generation of the Frankfurt School and in particular to the work of Jürgen Habermas, Axel Honneth and Rainer Forst. I consider critical theory a promising approach to analyze societies within the Arab world. The recent events of the Arab Spring highlight the centrality of issues of justice, freedom, equality, and dignity. Moreover, I find that social and political justice as advocated by Forst within his deliberative theory, Habermas's discourse theory, and Honneth's paradigm of recognition are helpful approaches for building a culture of critique and self-consciousness in the struggle against all forms of arbitrariness, domination, and exclusion. Moreover, they are suitable for examining power structures and power relations in the Arab world. In particular, the point of political justice is central in the age of the Arab Spring because it brings questions of power to the center in order to be able to justify the role of the individual as an active justifier and a right to participate in the political public sphere.

• Prof. Dr. Azelarabe Lakhim Bennani
• University of Fez - Faculté des lettres -
• Department of Philosophy/ Morocco
• E-mail: lazelarabe@hotmail.com

Career

Studies of philosophy at the University of Fes/ Morocco and the Université Paris 1 - Panthéon - Sorbonne/ France. 1988 Doctorate in Philosophy and Language and Philosophy and Semantics at the Université Paris 1 - Panthéon - Sorbonne. 1996 Habilitation at the University of Fez on the subject of semantics, philosophy and psychology with F. Brentano and Anton Marty. Numerous publications and contributions on human rights, justice and practical philosophy.

Research project

The research project within the project: responsibility, justice and culture of memory shall be entitled: "Towards the rehabilitation of the literature of the years of " rubble and ashes ". The case of Morocco." bear. The fantastic creative power of the Moroccan youth was further inspired since the end of the sixties by numerous magazines, poetry books, novels and political rallies. Freedom of expression was the main demand of these youth, which was limited with all violent force. Therefore, it was mainly young people who were imprisoned as criminals and sentenced to long prison terms for their politically inspired poems and dramas. Unintentionally, many poets, activists and students became heroes as a result. The long years of imprisonment were also years of reflection for many of the imprisoned, but also of further education. For many continued their education in prison through distance learning. Their literary production had already reached a wide readership by then. Some drew a line under their past and looked for a new way to shape their future. Abdellatif Laabi, for example, who had to experience imprisonment for more than ten years because of his successful francophone poems, became an even more successful poet in France. Others, however, now belong to a new generation of writers with the so-called "prison literature." And still others, who had been involved in radical left-wing activities before their imprisonment, tried out new ways of social integration by joining new parties, or human rights organizations. Between the young people they once were and today's disillusioned, there is now a gap that threatens to widen. The disillusioned person sees himself differently in his past - as an activist. He processes his prison trauma differently. Everything he sees in everyday life is new and reminds him that he missed a lot in captivity. At the same time, he doesn't want the trauma of memory to become a nightmare. How can the released now deal with the pain that was inflicted on them? In today's project we try to examine a selection of texts and poems from the magazine "Souffles". The concept of literary justice will accompany us in this process, within the framework of a human rights hermeneutic interpretation of literature. The goal is to rehabilitate the literature of the years of "rubble and ashes" and to shed new light on it from the spotlight of human rights. In the long run, we hope that the literature of the years of "rubble and ashes" will be allowed to acquire its regular and due status in the curricula of the related academic disciplines.

• Dr. phil. Moez Maataoui
• University of Gafsa/ University of Manouba
• Mail: moezmaataoui@yahoo.de

Career

Studied German language and literature at the University of Manouba (Tunis) with a Maȋtrise degree (1998). From 1998 to 2002 Master's degree in German as a foreign language philology and Islamic studies at the University of Heidelberg, Tunisian government scholarship. 2002- 2007 Doctorate in Linguistics at the University of Heidelberg with a dissertation on "Word Accent Acquisition in Tunisian Learners of German. Eine Untersuchung im Rahmen der Optimalitätstheorie" and work as a research assistant at the Institute for German as a Foreign Language Philology at the University of Heidelberg. 2007- 2009 Lecturer for German Language and Literature at the Universities of Tunis and Manouba (Tunisia). Since 2009 Lecturer for Applied German at the University of Gafsa (Tunisia). Since 2012 coordinator of the German department at the University of Gafsa and lecturer for translation at the University of Manouba.

Research projects

My research area is the language of dictatorship in pre-revolutionary Tunisia from a politolinguistic perspective. This field, whose research represents a kind of linguistic reappraisal of the linguistic heritage of Tunisia's recent past, offers a wide range of topics and objects of study from political discourse and public and non-public language use. The current focus of my work is on the study of the use of political buzzwords in the media during the dictatorship of Ben Ali (1987-2011). Buzzwords such as freedom, democracy, progress, human rights and pluralism were flag words of the authoritarian regime, which were used with propagandistic intentions and were used en masse in all authorized media in the country. The aim of my research is to analyze such buzzwords according to lexical-semantic and pragmatic criteria and to investigate the extent to which buzzwords were "misused" for propaganda purposes and to maintain the regime. Studies on the use of buzzwords in the GDR dictatorship - as well as on all other aspects of the GDR language - will serve as a source of inspiration for this study and as a basis for further comparative work.

• Dr. Soumaya Mestiri
• Institute of Philosophy
• Faculté des sciences humaines et sociales de Tunis
• University of Tunis
• E-mail: mestiri.soumaya@yahoo.fr

Career

Studies of philosophy at the University of Paris 1 - Sorbonne. 1998: Maîtrise in philosophy. 1999: Master's degree in political philosophy at the University of Paris. 2003: PhD on 'La conception de la personne dans la philosophie de John Rawls. Essai de reconstruction de la théorie de la justice comme équité. Since 2005, Ms. Mestiri has been a university lecturer of political and social philosophy at the University of Tunis. She is a specialist in the theories of justice, the relations between liberalism and republicanism, studies applied to gender and, in general, multicultural diversity. She also conducts research on the idea of an Islamic democratic tradition, in opposition to the proponents of an "Islamic exception," whether secularists or religious fundamentalists. Publications include: Rawls. Justice et équité, Paris, PUF, 2009; Islam as a Democratic Interlocutor ? Diogenes, 57, 2, 2011.

Research Project

As part of the research project "Responsibility, Justice, and the Culture of Memory," I will be working on the notion of testimony (témoignage). Important here is the idea of a double reconstruction, that of one's own deeply wounded self, engaged in the struggle for freedom, and that of the dictatorship itself, conceived as a phenomenon whose truth is grasped by us only in retrospect (similar to wars and genocides). The fact that the testimony can be conceived through this double, totally paradoxical point of view will be the touchstone of my contribution to the project: Revisiting the dictatorship is the sine qua non of an individual reconstruction. In this sense, testimony is exactly the opposite of confession: while the latter serves self-reconstruction through the annihilation of sin, which is eliminated through its verbalization, testimony makes pain live high again, in the hope of making a deeply wounded personality resilient. Within this framework, the analysis of the testimony of the Tunisian oppositionist and activist in the leftist movement "Perspectives," Gilbert Naccache, as found in his books "Cristal" (1982), "Le ciel est par-dessus le toit" (2005), and "Qu'as-tu fait de ta jeunesse?" (2005), is presented. Itinéraire d'un opposant au régime de Bourguiba" (2009), will be the first chain link of my work.

• Esther Mikuszies
• University of Kassel
• E-Mail: esther.mikuszies@gmail.com

Professional background

2000-2007 Studied academic politics, law and modern and contemporary history at the Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg im Breisgau; 2002-2003 Stay abroad at the Université Michel de Montaigne in Bordeaux/France; April - October 2005 in Riga/Latvia; Master's thesis on "Civil society engagement of migrants in France. Elternvereine in Mulhouse"; 2007-2012 research assistant at the Department of Comparative Politics at the University of Kassel; 2012-2013 scholarship holder of the Lothar-Bayer Foundation of the University of Kassel; doctoral project in political science at the University of Kassel on "Dynamics of political rights and citizenship: Ecuadorian and Moroccan migrants in Spain" with field stays in Spain, Morocco and Ecuador funded by the Rudolf and Ursula Lieberung Foundation of the University of Kassel.

Publications on the topic

The rights of migrants. Reflections on current paradoxes of citizenship practice, in: Dhouib, Sarhan (ed.) 2012: Kultur, Identität und Menschenrechte. Transcultural perspectives. Göttingen: Velbrück, 256-272. Emigration Policies and Citizenship Rhetoric: Morocco and its Emigrants in Europe, in: Ruß, Sabine and Helen Schwenken (eds.): New Border and Citizenship Politics. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, expected to be published at the end of 2014.

Research project

Injustice and new beginnings. Political elites in Morocco - How political elites come together after political upheavals and deal with experiences of injustice is one of the central questions of transition research. In Morocco, the monarchy initiated the process of coming to terms with the leaden years(les années du plomb) 'from above' with the Instance Équité et Reconciliation in 2004. Some of the former political prisoners and exiles were rehabilitated. Some of them can be found in political office today - not only in the IER - although the process of coming to terms with the past is not part of a regime change, but of an authoritarian restructuring. The project takes this as an opportunity to shed light from a psychoanalytical and life-world perspective on the paths and experiences of those who, as former victims of persecution, now participate in the institutions of the monarchy for various reasons. In qualitative expert interviews with a biographical focus, I would like to explore the view of the injustice suffered, the subjective understanding of reconciliation, the question of trust and acceptance of state authority, experiences with political participation as well as solidarity networks and alliances of former prisoners and exiles. The Moroccan experience is intended to sensitize people to dealing with the past in societies in which the living conditions of the inhabitants did not improve abruptly with a political upheaval.

• Dr. Brahim Moussa
• Institut supérieur des langues de Tunis
• Tunisia
• E-mail: br_moussa@yahoo.de

Career

Studied German language and literature at the University of La Manouba in Tunis, graduating in 2001, followed by a master's degree in German language and literature and general linguistics at the University of Münster. Graduated in 2004 with a master' s thesis on Women in Fontane's Stechlin. Individuality and Society. Doctoral studies at the University of Münster were completed in 2011 with a dissertation thesis on Heterotopias in Poetic Realism. Other Spaces, Other Texts. Since 2010 lecturer in German literature at the Higher Institute of Languages in Tunis at the University of Carthage. Since 2011, member of the research group (Unité de recherche) langue et formes culturelles at the University Institute of Languages in Tunis.

Research project

In the framework of the research project "Responsibility, Justice and Memory Culture", I would like to focus on Uwe Johnson's Anniversaries. From the Life of Gesine Cresspahl. In several respects, the four-volume text seems to me to do justice to the thrust of the research group. The work, whose four volumes were written between 1970 and 1983, engages with recent German history in a de-chronologized narrative form that layers spatiotemporally divergent narrative strands and relates them to one another. Thus, accounts of the past, e.g., of experiences under National Socialism, are juxtaposed with newspaper information from Gesine Cresspahl's everyday life in New York in the late 1960s and with memories from her early life in the GDR. This opens up a broad spectrum of negotiations with experiences in dictatorial state systems and repressive social structures, against which some protagonists defend themselves. Of course, Johnson's Anniversaries does not document history, but it is nonetheless a polyphonic novel that, through its polyphony, tells life stories or sections of life stories that claim to be highly truthful. The novel provides a plural social tableau of people who live, or have lived, in dictatorial conditions, and allows this to be described from their point of view but also from the point of view of others. These implications encourage deeper investigation in that the text allows history, e.g., the "triumphal march" of the Nazis in the early 1930s, to be told from conditions of its emergence, rather than from a perspective decades late with an already alien discourse. The rise of National Socialism is told from the perspective of Nazis, fellow travelers, neutrals and opponents, who think and act in paradigms of their time. With this procedure, the critical examination of dictatorship thrives on the discursive mode that emerged from the dictatorship. The focus of my investigation on anniversaries is on this finding of the emergence of resistance to dictatorship from its zeitgeist and its linguistic forms of realization. Furthermore, it is to be examined to what extent Jonhson's Anniversaries, the narration of history from a monoperspective of the present, is exchanged for a polyphonic history of simultaneity. Does Johnson thereby succeed in rescuing into permanent life the conventional historiography that Michel de Certeau defines as a funeral act of history? Does the text itself, in its narrative orientation, resist the accusation of forgetting that some critics, e.g. Lyotard, attribute to the reappraisal of history?

• Dr. Steffen Pappert
• University of Duisburg-Essen
• Institute for German Studies
• E-mail: steffen.pappert@uni-due.de

Career

Studied political science and general linguistics at the University of Leipzig; then research assistant at the Institute for Linguistics at the University of Leipzig. PhD 2003: "Political Language Games in the GDR: Communicative De-differentiation Processes and their Effects on Public Language Use" (Frankfurt a.M. et al.: Lang 2003). Subsequently teaching and research at the universities of Augsburg, Düsseldorf and Duisburg-Essen. Fields of work: Media communication, political communication, language use in the GDR, discourse analysis. Since 2011 member of the board of the AG Sprache in der Politik e.V..

Publications on the topic

• (2007) Ed.: The (dis)order of discourse. Leipzig.
• (2011) Ed., together with Bettina Bock and Ulla Fix: Politische Wechsel - Sprachliche Umbrüche. Berlin.

Research project

Following on from my previous work on language/language use in the GDR, I am primarily interested in identifying and describing similarities and differences between the public discourses that shaped the political systems before, during, and after the upheavals in Eastern Europe and North Africa, or that were shaped in rigid ways by those in power in each case.

• Dr. Sarah Schmidt
• Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities
• E-mail: sschmidt@bbaw.de

Career

Studied German and philosophy in Tübingen and Leipzig; doctorate in philosophy on the concept of interaction in Friedrich Schleiermacher. Five-year teaching position as DAAD Lektor in Paris (1999-2004); 2004-2007 appointment as research associate at the Institute for Transdisciplinarity at the Bern University of the Arts (CH), as well as teaching positions at the Swiss Literature Institute (Biel, CH) and at the University of Cergy-Pontoise (F) in German Studies. 2008 - March 2011 research associate at the University of Stuttgart, Institute for Literary Studies, where she taught and coordinated the PhD network "Internationalization of Literature and Science". Since September 2010, head of the DFG network "Languages of Collecting" (duration 2011-2014; 15 members); March 2010 DAAD visiting lecturer at King's College, London. Since May 2011 research associate at the BBAW Schleiermacher Research Unit and teaching at the Chair of Philosophy at the Faculty of Theology of HU; In addition to academic work, participation in scientific-artistic projects. Main research interests: Early Romanticism, literature of the present, interaction of philosophy and literature, material culture and knowledge collection, interculturality and discourses of foreignness. Publications include: The Construction of the Finite. Schleiermacher's Philosophy of Interaction, Walter de Gruyter, (2005); (with A. Kostka) "Alterity Research/Interculturality Research," in: Methodological History of German Studies (2009); "Vom Kofferpacken. The Fragile Alliance of Things with Language in the Work of Herta Müller," in Journal of German Studies 1/2012.

Research Project

My research project is dedicated to the interrelationship of language and perception, its general functioning and its specific modification in times of oppression and persecution in the work of contemporary author Herta Müller. In her novels, essays and pictorial poems, Herta Müller thematizes the everyday life of the Romanian-German population under the changing dictatorships, turning the supposed "perpetrators" of Germany-sympathizers in the Third Reich into the supposed victims under Ceausescu's dictatorship. A constant being and being observed characterizes the conservative village community as much as the population under the terror of the security service. My investigations first turn to the specific theory of perception that Herta Müller outlines, especially in her essay collection Der König verneigt sich und tötet (The King bows down and kills), which is summed up as a constant overlapping of past and present in the neologisms of "Vergangenwart" and "Gegenheit. In a second step, the impact on perception and language of the "system of fear", generated by targeted interventions in private life and specific interrogation methods (Der Fuchs war damals schon der Jäger, 1992 and Heute wär ich lieber mir nicht begegnet,1997), and the "system of hunger", understood as a permanent borderline experience of physical and psychological exhaustion (Atemschaukel, 2004), will be examined. Such effects include the expansion of the nomenclature of silence as well as the fragmentation and a radical dynamization of language. In the last instance, Herta Müller's reflection on language and perception in times of dictatorship is always connected to the question of the linguization and communicability of borderline experiences. In comparison with authors from the Arab countries, I hope that the research project will lead to a discussion of the conditions for the possibility of a transculturality of those experiences of borders and injustice.

• Dr. Mongi Serbagi
• Djerba and University of Tunis
• Tunisia
• E-mail: serbaji_mongi@yahoo.fr

Career

2010 PhD in philosophy on "The procedural reconstruction of law in Habermas" at the University of Tunis. Participant in various conferences in Tunisia and abroad and author of a large number of articles. The subject of his contributions: the cultural rights in the Islamic and Arab human rights declarations, the culture of human rights and its opponents in the Arab world, the legitimation processes in the transnational public sphere, the concept of "citizen" in the Islamic human rights declarations and the origins of tolerance. His current area of interest: the issues of justice and human rights from a global perspective.

Publications on the topic

"The Culture of Human Rights and its Enemies in the Arab World", in Sarhan Dhouib, Democracy, Pluralism and Human Rights. Transcultural Perspectives, Velbrück Science, 2014.

Research Project

As part of the interdisciplinary project "Responsibility, Justice and Memory Culture", my research project deals with the topic of "Responsibility and Human Rights from the Perspective of a Transcultural Approach". This topic is mainly dealt with from a philosophical point of view. It develops from three starting points. First, I define a transcultural approach. Here I focus especially on an essential feature that constructs the universality of human rights, starting with a pluralism of justifications of their content. This pluralism is caused by differences in cultural traditions. In the second point, I will explain that for any conception of human rights it is necessary to pose the question of the problem of responsibility: For this purpose, I elaborate a moral justification of responsibility, which is based on the negative duty not to tolerate injustice towards others. In the third point, I explain the levels of tension between the idea of a pluralism of justification and the idea of responsibility, in order to show the difficulties that a transcultural approach would have to overcome. At the end, I examine the ability of the transcultural approach regarding a solution to these difficulties. The aim of my research project is to warn against a culturalist conception which could serve to justify a dictatorship and which - by relativizing norms - universalizes irresponsibility towards the Other. Every violation of human rights is basically a form of injustice towards every person who is responsible.

• PD Dr. Dirk Stederoth
• Institute of Philosophy
• University of Kassel
• E-mail: d.stederoth@uni-kassel.de

Career

SS 1990-WS 1995/96: Studies of Philosophy and Sociology at the University of Kassel. 12/1995: Master's degree in Philosophy and Sociology. 02/1996: Doctoral candidate in the Department of Philosophy at FB 01 of the University of Kassel. 05/2000: Doctorate. Dissertation topic: "Refractions of the real mind. A comparative commentary on Hegel's 'Philosophy of the subjective spirit'". SS 2000 - WS 2002/2003: Studies for the teaching profession at grammar schools in the subjects philosophy and social studies (11/2002: 1st state examination). 06/2013: Habilitation with the paper: "Freiheitsgrade. On the systematic differentiation of practical freedom". 10/2007-08/2014: Lecturer for special tasks at the Institute of Philosophy at the University of Kassel. From 09/2014: Research assistant at the Institute of Philosophy at the University of Kassel.

Publications on the topic

• "Erwiderung auf Mahmoud Bassiouni", in: Sarhan Dhouib (ed.), Culture, Identity and Human Rights. Transcultural Perspectives, Weilerswist 2012, pp. 201-202.
• "Erwiderung auf Sarhan Dhouib", in: Sarhan Dhouib (ed.), Democracy, Pluralism and Human Rights. Transcultural Perspectives, Weilerswist 2014, pp. 191-193.

Research project

My research project follows the tradition of a critical social philosophy that endeavors to make the categories of classical psychoanalysis fruitful for an analysis of contemporary societies. The aim is to use the analytical tools to understand social processes within totalitarian structures as well as after they have been overcome. This means, for example, interpreting the painful experiences within totalitarian regimes not only as phenomena of demarcation, but also as forms of attachment which, according to Freudian evidence of ambivalent emotions towards authoritarian leaders, necessarily lead to structures of repression. With this set of instruments, it can be shown that the psyche is damaged by totalitarian regimes in two ways, in that it is traumatized on the one hand and at the same time tends towards authoritarian behaviour through unconscious identifications even when such a regime seems to have been overcome. In this context, the concept of a culture of remembrance plays a decisive role, insofar as coming to terms with a totalitarian past is inseparable from a responsible confrontation with the persistence of authoritarian structures in the behavior of those who have suffered such damage. The culture of remembrance of what happened and its relentless clarification is therefore only one side of coming to terms with the past - the other side, which focuses on the critical examination of authoritarian behaviour in the historical aftermath of a totalitarian regime and is outlined by the concept of responsibility, is of equal relevance and both perspectives are mutually beneficial.

• Imen Taleb, M.A.
• FLAH University of Manouba
• Email: imen.taleb1983@gmail.com

Career

German studies at the Language Institute of Gabes University (ISLG). 2008 university degree "Maîtrise". Subsequent master studies until 2012. Master thesis on "The figure of the failure in the scene "The informer" from Bertolt Brecht's drama "Fear and misery of the Third Reich". 2009/10 Lecturer at the University of Gafsa in German Studies, 2010-2013 at ISSH Tunis, since 2013 at FLAH Manouba. 2014 Board member of the Tunisian Association of Germanists and German Teachers (TGDV).

Research project

My research project, which I would like to develop into my dissertation project, is related to the representation of dictatorship and torture in the novels of the Iraqi-German writer Abbas Khider. His works are about Arab characters in their everyday lives, which are characterized by repression and tyranny. These characters leave their homeland with the hope of a new beginning, as far away as possible from the corrupt dictatorial Arab states, and try to escape to a life without oppression and censorship. A literary study of a writer of Iraqi origin who publishes in German seems promising, especially because of the interesting constellation of the internal and external perspectives of the author living in exile. How does the writer portray the mechanisms of repression and torture in the Iraqi dictatorship of Saddam Houssein's era? Especially after the popular uprisings, this topic is highly topical in the Arab states.

• Dr. Rachid Touhtou
• University of Rabat/ Morocco
• E-mail: rachidtouhtou@gmail.com

Career

Rachid Touhtou (MA, PhD) is an Assistant Professor at the National Institute of Statistics and Applied Economics (INSEA) in Rabat, affiliated to the Social Sciences, Languages and Communication Department where he teaches Technical English, Business English and Social Public Policies. He also developed a course on Social development in Morocco with specialty in Qualitative research. He also taught for nine years EFL in high schools in different parts of Morocco. He conducted research on the role of NGOs in local development in the North of Morocco with a focus on the role of gender in civil society participation in decentralized development. He published on civil society, social movements, migration and gender. He is a member of the first group of young researchers on gender in Morocco (GREGAM). A member of the Labour Union of University Teachers (SNEsup) and a member of the Moroccan Democratic Civil Forum (FCDM); He also lectures on civil society and social movements in Morocco (the Nationalist, Feminist, human Rights, Amazigh and youth movements). He has also developed a blog on social movements in Morocco: www.rachidtouhtouh.blogspot.com. He recently finished being a project manager and coordinator of a fieldwork research on the evolution of migration systems in which he conducted qualitative research on return migration in the greater regions of Rabat and Nador in partnership with Erasmus University in the Netherlands and International Migration Institute (IMI) in Oxford University. He worked for Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut as non-resident external consultant for the Maghrebi activities; He was an expert in an international project on "varieties of democracy" (V-Dem) with University of Gothenburg.

Publications on the topic

• (2012): Debating Civil Society in Morocco: Dynamics of Gender, Development and Social Capital. LAP Academic Publishing, Germany.
• (2014): Gender Codification in the Family Law and in the Constitution in Morocco: Social Movement and Feminist Approaches in FEPS and SOLIDAR Publications, Woman up! Enhancing women's rights in the Middle East and North Africa",
• (2014): Last but not least, A co-authored paper in Arabic: Narrated Memory and Transitional Justice: Social Movements and New History Approaches. In Edafat: the Arab Journal of Sociology, Summer 2014.

Research project

Carceral Testimonial Narratives in Morocco (1982-2014): Works of Memory and Historical Truth This project explores the linkages between the emergence of new social movements in transitions to fragile democracies, and the individualization processes in producing counter public spheres cultures. I argue for a micro-analysis of political 'subtle and informal strategies' (Vandana Desai.2002) to understand the position and role of individual participants in the anthropology of social movements (Robert Gibb, 2001) in postcolonial Morocco. Understanding social movements' cultural and political productions of meanings necessitates a re-examination of the "weight of daily praxis "1. To remedy this gap in research, my paper tries to include the individualization processes in the making of social movements protest through a study of collective and individual memories as narratives of historicizing social movements; in this case, I will analyze recent testimonial narratives during the reconciliation phase2 both written and oral and how narrativizing leads to historicizing social movements from the position of the individual actor. The second case is the study of "memory actors" as a cultural/identity nexus because these individuals invest social movements and civil society as actors of "recognition". Memory and reconciliation created the divide between Moroccan civil society actors and the State's organizations. It becomes the site of contestation and "a site for a discursive struggle for meanings" (Barbara Adam and Stuart Allan, 1995). The paper argues that bringing the "social and political" dimensions as well as the actors' vocabularies and repertoires into the anthropology of social movements can open new horizons to move beyond the impasse in the study of social movements from an anthropological perspective through recognizing micro/local cultural practices and informal politics back into the debate on collective action and the public sphere.