Steffi Hobuß How Has the Issue of Gender Been Negotiated in Tunisia’s Recent History?

Steffi Hobuß is Senior Lecturer and Associate Professor of Philosophy as well as Vice-Dean for Internationalization at the Leuphana University of Lüneburg. Previously, she has held teaching and research positions at the University of Bielefeld and the University of Hannover. She has won the Leuphana University of Lüneburg Award for Innovative Teaching three times, most recently in 2015. Since January 2016, she is the leader of the Tunisian-German interdisciplinary research project ‘Transformation, Culture, Gender’. Since 2017 she acts as leader of the Leuphana College.

Area of Research

Intercultural Philosophy

Steffi Hobuß. Wittgenstein über Expressivität: der Ausdruck in Körpersprache und Kunst. Internationalismus Verl., 1998.  
Steffi Hobuß. "Silence, Remembering, and Forgetting in Wittgenstein, Cage, and Derrida." In Beyond Memory: Silence and the Aesthetics of Remembrance, edited by A. Dessingué and J. Winter. New York: Routledge, 2015: 95-110.  
Steffi Hobuß. "Kritik, Autonomie und Widerstand bei Adorno und Derrida: Überlegungen zur Rolle von Bildung und Ästhetik." In Die Frage der Kritik im Interferenzfeld von Literatur und Philosophie, edited by Ulrich Wergin and Martin Schierbaum. Würzburg: Verlag Königshausen & Neumann, 2015: 59–86.  
Steffi Hobuß and Nicola Tams. Lassen und Tun: Kulturphilosophische Debatten zum Verhältnis von Gabe und kulturellen Praktiken. Bielefeld: transcript Verlag, 2014.  

since 1996

Senior Lecturer / Associate Professor of Philosophy

Leuphana University, Lüneburg

Institute of Philosophy and Sciences of Art

1990-1994

Lecturer

University of Bielefeld (Universität Bielefeld)

Department of Philosophy

1991-1992

Lecturer

University of Hanover (Leibniz Universität Hannover)

1985-1989

Student Research Assistant

University of Hanover (Leibniz Universität Hannover)

2017

Habilitation

Leuphana University, Lüneburg

Philosophy

1994

PhD

University of Bielefeld (Universität Bielefeld)

Philosophy

1989

First State Examination (Erstes Staatsexamen)

University of Hanover (Leibniz Universität Hannover)

- Member of the International Arab-German Research Group ”Responsibility, Justice and Cultural Memory” (2013 - 2015)

- Leader of Tunisian-German Interdisciplinary Research Project ”Transformation, Culture, Gender” (since 2016)

Prizes

- Leuphana University of Lüneburg Award for Innovative Teaching (2009, 2011, 2015)

- Lise-Meitner-Program for Habilitation, North Rhine-Westphalia (1996)

- Research Grant North Rhine-Westphalia, University of Bielefeld (1994 - 1995)

Since Tunisia’s independence in 1956, the country has had a unique approach to the issue of gender compared to other Arabic countries as it pushed a public discourse on modernization and women’s rights. In this video, STEFFI HOBUß describes the approach of her researcher group to analyze how the issue of gender has been negotiated in Tunisia and how this has influenced Tunisia’s cultural memory ever since. By combining the philosophical idea of the resignification of concepts with an empirical approach, the team found that on the one hand, there were real improvements for women but on the other hand, the state instrumentalized and almost entirely dominated the discourse on women’s rights in order to present as a modern state what was effectively a dictatorship. This has strong implications for today’s Tunisia because any ideas and policies of modernization or feminism carry dictatorial connotations.

LT Video Publication DOI: https://doi.org/10.21036/LTPUB10387

Sprachliche Resignifikation im Kontext der Diktatur: Der Begriff der Frauenrechte in Tunesien (1987-2011)

  • Steffi Hobuß and Nadia El Ouerghemmi
  • Philosophieren in der Diktatur
  • In Press
Steffi Hobuß and Nadia El Ouerghemmi. "Sprachliche Resignifikation im Kontext der Diktatur: Der Begriff der Frauenrechte in Tunesien (1987-2011)." In Philosophieren in der Diktatur, edited by Sarhan Dhouib. Velbrück Verlag, In Press.