Meriam Bousselmi

PhD Project "Staging (In)Justice: Toward a Performance-Based Theory of Justice"

This dissertation examines the performative dimensions of (in)justice—how justice is enacted, contested, and rendered intelligible through staging practices that operate beyond conventional legal institutions. It argues that justice is not solely administered by the state but emerges as a culturally embedded, politically negotiated, and performatively constituted practice. Drawing on performance studies’ emphasis on embodiment, relationality, and visibility, the study reconceptualizes justice as a dynamic and contested process articulated across aesthetic, political, and epistemic registers.

Addressing a critical gap at the intersection of legal theory, political philosophy, and performance studies, the dissertation conceptualizes staging as a dispositif—a term drawn from Michel Foucault’s work on power, knowledge, and institutional formation, and further developed by Cornelia Vismann—to denote a situated configuration of discursive, symbolic, and affective operations that shape the conditions under which (in)justice is claimed, embodied, and made visible. From this perspective, justice is not a stable institutional form but a contingent and situated practice. Staging, in this framework, is not merely a representational tool but a performative force through which justice is expanded, reconfigured, and rendered thinkable anew. The dissertation introduces the concept of performance-based justice to theorize interventions by artists, activists, and justice practitioners engaged in extra-institutional processes—such as people’s tribunals, juridico-aesthetic stagings, and performative trials—that rearticulate harm, contest institutional exclusion, and reshape political subjectivity. These performances do not merely symbolize justice; they actively enact its possibility.

Methodologically, the study adopts a transdisciplinary and transcultural approach, combining close analysis of performance texts and enacted practices with theoretical inquiry across law, philosophy, and aesthetics. It engages a plurilingual and transculturally situated corpus of juridico-aesthetic stagings—including Hélène Cixous’s The Parjured City, or the Awakening of the Furies, Omar Abou Saada and Mohammad Al Attar’s Antigone of Shatila, Yan Duyvendak and Roger Bernat’s Please, Continue (Hamlet), the International Monsanto Tribunal, and Pascal Gally’s The Trial of Progress. These case studies examine how (in)justice is staged through diverse performative idioms in contexts shaped by colonial legacies, forced displacement, and structural violence. The dissertation also analyzes the translation of injustice across Arabic, French, German, and English, showing how language becomes a site of epistemic and juridical struggle, where testimony, interpretation, and authority are continuously negotiated.

The work brings together legal, political, and cultural theoretical perspectives with approaches from performance and epistemology into a productive dialogue. Central references include Sophie Klimis (justice as practice), Cornelia Vismann (legal media and dispositifs), Erika Fischer-Lichte (aesthetics of the performative), Jacques Rancière (dissensus, emancipation, and aesthetics), Daniel Loick (tribunalism and plastic justice), Emmanuel Renault (experience of injustice), Peter M. Boenisch and Patrice Pavis (aesthetics of staging), François Ost and Werner Gephart (law and culture), as well as Camille Montavon and Franck Carpentier (people’s tribunals). Additional references include Miranda Fricker (epistemic injustice), Seloua Luste Boulbina and Soumaya Mestiri (decolonial and feminist critique), Samera Esmeir (juridical humanity), Nancy Fraser (abnormal and transnational justice), and Antoine Garapon (other justices).

By analyzing how aesthetic and extra-institutional practices stage justice, the dissertation formulates a performance-based theory of justice—one that reconceives justice as a situated, embodied, and relational act. Justice, here, is not the telos of legal procedure but a performative force that renders contested truths visible, enacts dissensus, and activates emergent forms of political subjectivity and agency. This framework contributes to contemporary debates on epistemic injustice, decolonial legality, and the aesthetics of law by showing that justice materializes not through institutional closure but through iterative acts of staging that open space for recognition, repair, and refusal. Performance-based justice thus emerges not as a supplement to juridical rationality but as an expansive and inventive mode of juridical imagination—one that redefines what justice can become, for whom, and under what conditions.

About

Meriam Bousselmi positions herself as a plurilingual and transdisciplinary scholar working at the intersection of legal theory, political thought, performance studies, cultural policy, and critical theory. Her research explores the entanglements of aesthetics, politics, and cultural production. She engages critically with justice not as a fixed legal category, but as a mode of knowing, a site of contestation, and a performative practice shaping political capacities and forms of subjectivity.

Working across Arabic, French, English, and German contexts, she challenges Eurocentric frameworks of legal and epistemic hegemony by developing a comparative and transcultural analytic practice. Her work contributes to a performance-based understanding of (in)justice as both an aesthetic and political practice, shaped by cultural tensions, epistemic exclusions, and demands for agency.

Born in Tunis in 1983, she studied law and political science at the University of Tunis Carthage while simultaneously receiving training in stage directing and dramaturgy at the Arab-African Center for Theatre Training and Research (A.R.A.F.) at El Hamra Theatre. As a plurilingual lawyer, writer, director, lecturer, and researcher, she brings together legal expertise with aesthetic strategies and cultural critique.

In 2010, Meriam Bousselmi completed her master’s thesis under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Hamadi Redissi on the recognition of same-sex partnerships in private international law—an early and critical intervention in Tunisia’s socio-legal landscape, where homosexuality remains criminalized. The thesis, written in French and entitled La réception de l’union homosexuelle en droit international privé, received a high classification (15/20) and was awarded a special commendation by the jury. That same year, she was admitted to the National Order of Lawyers of Tunisia.

In 2014, Meriam Bousselmi defended her legal dissertation on the precarious financial situation of dramatic artists and the limitations of the Tunisian legal framework for the protection of intellectual property. Her dissertation, titled The Protection of Playwrights’ Pecuniary Rights, offered a critical and original contribution to the field and was written in Arabic under the supervision of Maître Nafaa Laribi, a specialist in media law, intellectual property law, and criminal law. In recognition of this work, Bousselmi was awarded the Prize for the Best Conference at the conclusion of her legal internship at the National Order of Lawyers of Tunisia.

In 2015, she co-authored the Carthage Declaration for the Protection of Artists in Vulnerable Situations with Prof. Dr. Hamadi Redissi and Prof. Dr. Lassaad Jamoussi—a juridico-political manifesto defending artistic freedom and cultural rights.

Since 2017, Bousselmi has collaborated with the UNESCO Chair Arts Rights Justice at the University of Hildesheim, where she leads international workshops, publishes scholarly work, and contributes to research and policy initiatives on cultural rights and artistic freedom. She also serves as an independent advisor and curator for Safe Havens and Freedom Talks (SH|FT), a global civil society initiative supporting endangered and dissident artists.

As a plurilingual writer and director, Bousselmi has received international recognition for her thought-provoking work at the intersection of aesthetics and politics. Her production Mémoire en retraite was awarded the Sheikh Sultan Bin Mohammed Al Qasimi Prize for Best Arab Theatre Production at the 4th Arab Theatre Festival in 2011. Her solo performance What the Dictator Did Not Say received the theatre prize of THEATER FEDERATIOUN (FLAS) in 2014. She has been a fellow at the Academy of Arts in Berlin (2012), the International Forum of the Berliner Theatertreffen (2013), and the DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Program (2016).

In July 2020, she was selected as a research associate at the International Doctoral College Kulturvermittlung / Cultural Mediation of Art and received a DFH mobility grant to conduct research in Paris and Tunis on the project Staging Moot Courts to Reinvent Justice in France and Tunisia.

Since June 2022, Bousselmi has been a doctoral researcher at the DFG-funded Research Training Group Aesthetic Practice at the Faculty of Cultural Studies and Aesthetic Communication at the University of Hildesheim.

Artistic Practice

Meriam Bousselmi’s artistic practice unfolds at the intersection of theatre, literature, performative writing, and installation—not to represent, but to reconfigure. Trained in both law and performance, she composes a transdisciplinary and plurilingual practice—across Arabic, French, German, and English—that challenges the frameworks through which voices are framed, translated, or disciplined. Her work draws on a Rancièrian commitment to redistributing the sensible: generating new capacities for perception while unsettling dominant regimes of visibility, authorship, and legibility.

As a Tunisian female artist, her position has always been double—embedded in the structures she critiques, while working to subvert them from within. On Arabic-speaking theatre and literature stages, she became both participant and dissenter, forging a critical voice that navigated complicity and resistance from inside. Her relocation to Berlin in 2018, following a DAAD Artists-in-Berlin residency, marked a shift in positionality. No longer situated within a singular cultural frame, she now speaks across—navigating the layered asymmetries of diasporic existence and Eurocentric curatorial regimes.

Her recent works include A Look at the World (2017)—a 50-minute performance in total darkness that explores the sources of hope and resistance when vision is denied. HomeWord (2019) is a monologue that traverses the biography of German poet Hilde Domin to reflect on the urgency of poetry in the face of exile and erasure. In The Beauty in Between (2020), she interrogates the limits of communication within what she calls the "jungle of languages," probing the violence of translation and the longing for shared meaning. Her most recent solo performance, Guilt Monologues – Portraits of Innocent Persons and Objects (2023), premiered at the Roter Salon of the Volksbühne Berlin, and translates her academic research on (in)justice into aesthetic form. It stages how responsibility and guilt are assigned through structural violence—in a world shaped by colonial continuities, climate injustice, and authoritarian resurgence.

Rather than seeking resolution, her artistic research opens spaces of ambiguity, opacity, and rupture—insisting on remaining uncontained: artistically, politically, and linguistically. Through aesthetic friction and poetic insurgency, her practice generates a situated and insurgent form of knowledge that disrupts dominant narratives and reclaims the right to complexity.

Publications (Selection)

Academic Book Chapters

2024: The Sankofa Strategy: A Plea for a Timeless African Theatres. In: Kene Igweonu (ed.): Routledge Handbook of African Theatre and Performance. Chapter 36. DOI: 10.4324/9781003176060-41

2022: Arts Education. A Waste of Time and Taxpayers’ Money? In: Wolfgang Schneider, Yvette Hardie, Emily Akuno, Daniel Gad (eds.): Cultural Policy for Arts Education. African-European Practices and Perspectives. Berlin: Peter Lang Verlag, pp. 269–280. https://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/53921

2019: When the Artist Claims to Be "His Own Government”. On Artists’ Voices in the Making of Cultural Policies. In: Daniel Gad, Katharina M. Schröck, Aron Weigl (eds.): Forschungsfeld Kulturpolitik – eine Kartierung von Theorie und Praxis. Festschrift für Wolfgang Schneider. Hildesheim: Georg Olms Verlag, pp. 207–216. https://hilpub.uni-hildesheim.de/entities/publication/f7f934f1-7d38-40a0-86ed-ced148a5f739 

2018: Das Unüberschreitbare überschreiten – Künstler in der Auseinandersetzung mit Grenzen (Crossing the Uncrossable – Artists Confronting Borders). In: Ilse Fischer, Johannes Hahn (eds.): Europa neu denken, vol. 5: Brücken bauen zwischen Nationen und Kulturen in eine neue Welt. Salzburg: Verlag Anton Pustet, pp. 155–177. Originally written in French; German translation by Corinna Popp.

Academic Studies

2019: FREEDOM DOES NOT FEED BREAD. On the State of Artistic Freedom in the Performing Arts during Tunisia’s Democratic Transition. In: ARJ Studies, Arts Rights Justice Library of the UNESCO Chair at the University of Hildesheim. 60 pages.
https://www.uni-hildesheim.de/arts-rights-justice-library/arj-studies/

Academic Articles and Essays

(electronic and print journals)

2024: Bullshit: Die Menschheit zur Ware machen – Wer zahlt? (Bullshit: Turning Humanity into a Commodity – Who Pays?) In: PLATEFORME, 13.12.2024. Originally written in French; German translation by Frank Wigand. Published in both French and German.
https://plateforme.de/magazin/meriem-bousselmi-ueber-she-she-pops-neueste-performance-bullshit/

2024: Übersetzung als ästhetische Praxis der komplexen Komplizinnenschaft (Translation as an Aesthetic Practice of Complex Complicity). In: PLATEFORME, 01.03.2024. Originally written in French; German translation by Corinna Popp. Published in both French and German.
https://plateforme.de/magazin/10474/

2024: Praxis, Gender und Genie? Hegel, Kant und Carla Lonzi? Gendert das weibliche Genie die ästhetische Praxis? (Practice, Gender and Genius? Hegel, Kant and Carla Lonzi? Does the Female Genius Re-Gender Aesthetic Practice?) In: PLATEFORME, 02.02.2024. Originally written in French; German translation by Corinna Popp. Published in both French and German.
https://plateforme.de/magazin/meriam-bousselmi-laedt-uns-ein-auf-kant-und-hegel-zu-spucken/

2023: Eine Übung in Bewunderung: Das internationale Regisseurinnen-Festival „Jassad“ in Rabat – Über feministische Komplizinnenschaft als ästhetische Praxis (An Exercise in Admiration: The International Women Directors’ Festival “Jassad” in Rabat – On Feminist Complicity as Aesthetic Practice). In: PLATEFORME, 22.12.2023. Originally written in French; German translation by Corinna Popp. Published in both French and German.
https://plateforme.de/magazin/eine-uebung-in-bewunderung-das-internationale-regisseurinnen-festival-jassad-in-rabat/

2023: Übersetzung als ästhetische Praxis: Der Titel ist frei übersetzbar (Translation as Aesthetic Practice: The Title is Open to Interpretation). In: PLATEFORME, 12.05.2023. Originally written in French; German translation by Corinna Popp. Published in both French and German.
https://plateforme.de/magazin/uebersetzung-als-aesthetische-praxis/

2019: Eineinhalb Frauen? Über Sprache und feministischen Widerstand (One and a Half Women? On Language and Feminist Resistance). In: FANN Magazine / Gunda-Werner-Institut für Feminismus und Geschlechterdemokratie, 03.04.2019. Originally written in Arabic (literary form); German translation by Hannah El-Hitami. Published in Arabic and German.
https://www.gwi-boell.de/de/2019/04/03/eineinhalb-frauen-ueber-sprache-und-feministischen-widerstand

2018: Invisible Cages: Artistic Freedom in the Face of Cultural Labelling Policies. In: Arts Rights Justice Library, UNESCO Chair, University of Hildesheim.
https://www.uni-hildesheim.de/arts-rights-justice-library/tag/artistic-freedom/

2018: Le Tarmac, un théâtre victime de la théâtrocratie ? (Le Tarmac, a Theatre Victim of Theatrocracy?). In: NAWAAT, 22.02.2018.
https://nawaat.org/2018/02/22/le-tarmac-un-theatre-victime-de-la-theatrocratie/

2015: Theatre When Everything Is Theatricalized. In ART&THOUGHT / FIKRUN WA FANN, Magazine of the Goethe-Institut e.V., no. 103, Munich, pp. 49–55. Originally written in Arabic (literary form). English translation by Jonathan Wright. Published in Arabic and English.

Artistic Publications (Theatre and Literature)

2017: A Look at the World. Play. Originally written in French and English. International Performing Rights Ltd (UK), London.
https://www.iprltd.co.uk/titles/a-look-at-the-world

2015: What the Dictator Didn’t Say. Monodrama. Originally written in French. Translated by Salma Riahi. International Performing Rights Ltd (UK), London.
https://www.iprltd.co.uk/titles/what-the-dictator-didn-t-say

2014: Sin of Success. Play. Originally written in Classical Arabic. Translated by Salma Riahi. International Performing Rights Ltd (UK), London.
https://www.iprltd.co.uk/titles/sin-of-success

2013: Truth Box. Performative monologues. Originally written in French. Translated into German by Silvio D’Allesandro. Hartmann & Stauffacher Verlag, Cologne.
https://hartmann-stauffacher.de/werke/detail/t3886

2012: Mémoire en retraite (Retired Memory). Play. Originally written in Tunisian Arabic. Translated by Leila Chammaa and Youssef Hijazi. Hartmann & Stauffacher Verlag, Cologne.
https://hartmann-stauffacher.de/werke/detail/t3815

2012: Rêves d’hiver au petit matin. Les printemps arabes vus par 50 écrivains et dessinateurs (Winter Dreams at Dawn. The Arab Spring Seen by 50 Writers and Illustrators). Anthology. Elyzad, Tunis.
https://elyzad.com/livres/collection-passages/reves-dhiver-au-petit-matin/

2010: Meshy-on-line. Play. Originally written in Lebanese Arabic. Bissan für Verlag, Vertrieb und Medien, Beirut.
https://alfurat.com/books/149271?srsltid=AfmBOophcmdB2o4epvwkAL6zBziWenifrcd-FXKPd-MlB4vDm2Rczy2f

2007: Life Draft. (مسودة حياة.)  Interactive novel in Arabic. Sud Editions, Tunis.
http://www.sudeditions.com/ar/auteur/%D9%85%D8%B1%D9%8A%D9%85-%D8%A8%D9%88%D8%B3%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%85%D9%8A

Teaching

 Summer Semester 2021 - Staging (in) justice

 Winter Semester 2018/19 - Staging (in) justice

Talks / Panels / Workshops (Selected)

2024

Talk – “The Middle Beast: The Impact of German Cultural Practices on Arabic-Speaking Cultures, Cultural Workers, and Artists”, (Un)Fair Practices, DFG Research Training Group 2477 & UNESCO Chair University Hildesheim, Dec 5–7
Talk – “Decolonial-splaining? On the Hegemony of a Discursive Practice”, Annual Conference “Decolonial Aesthetic Practices?”, DFG Research Training Group 2477, University of Hildesheim, Nov 7–9
Lecture Performance – “TOZ – Disrupting Neocolonial Practices Imposed by Borders”, Opening Lecture at the Conference “Critiques of Power in the Arts”, mdw – University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna, May
Talk – “LE SOUTENEUR NATUREL DES JUGEURS – Staging the Monstrosity of the Norm”, Conference “The Monstrous and the Theatre”, JLU Giessen, Apr
Guest Lecture – Seminar “Contemporary Drama”, Prof. Dr. Grit Köppen, University of the Arts Berlin (UdK), Jan 22

2023

Co-Curator & Co-Moderator – Entangled Practices, Annual Conference, DFG Research Training Group 2477, University of Hildesheim, Nov 8 & 22–24
Moderator & Speaker – Safe Havens Conference, SH|FT & UNESCO Chair University Hildesheim, Athens, Nov 7–10
Keynote – “Who would save the rooster who saved you, Scheherazade?”, Annual Conference of the African Theatre Association (AfTA), Royal Holloway, University of London, July 31 – Aug 2
Panelist – “Literature in Diaspora: What is the Place of Words?”, Catholic Academy Berlin, July 11
Panel Discussion – “A Conversation about Critique – und Kritik der Kritik” with Florentine Muhry, Simone Niehoff, and Simon Niemann, as part of the lecture series “Kritische Ästhetische Praxis”, University of Hildesheim, Feb 16
Mentor – ITI Academy, Theater der Welt Festival

2022

Talk – “Stop Faking Justice, Start Making It! On Justice, Theatre and Mimesis”, Annual Conference “mimesis – praxis – aisthesis”, DFG Research Training Group 2477, University of Hildesheim, Oct 13–15
Talk – “Montaigne’s head and Aesop’s tongue”, Symposium “Artistic Interventions in Educational and Social Contexts”, as part of the certificate course “Artistic Interventions in Cultural Education”, University of Hildesheim, July 8–9
Talk – Reflecting and Re:Starting South-North Cooperation and Collaboration: Needs and Desires of Sub-Saharan-Arab-European Cultural Policies, Workshop, UNESCO Chair University Hildesheim, July 7

2021

Talk – “The Mergoum Protocol: Typically Tunisian, (A)typically German?”, CAMP Notes on Education, Documenta-Fifteen, in cooperation with UNESCO Chair University Hildesheim, Dec 9
Moderator & Curator – Safe Havens 2021’s Majlis, digital debate on artistic freedom, Dec
Co-Moderator – A Moment of Art – Creativity between Two Languages, digital conference organized by Ettijahat – Independent Culture, Nov
Talk – “Cultural Policy Inside-Out”, Symposium, University of Hildesheim, Oct
Idea Sparker – Collective/Collecting Intelligence – Explorations of Artistic Intelligence A/I in the Context of Artificial Intelligence, Digital Dramaturgy Lab, Centre for Drama, Theatre and Performance Studies, University of Toronto, in cooperation with UNESCO Chair University Hildesheim, Mar 27

2019

Keynote & Workshop Lead – Safe Havens Conference, Cape Town: “Legal Defences for Creatives (MENA Case Studies)”
Lecture Performance – “Zusammenkeit! – On the Aesthetics of Love”, Annual Conference “Republik der Liebe”, Dramaturgische Gesellschaft, Jena
Talk & Discussion – “Women and Revolution”, Montagstalk, Staatsschauspiel Dresden
Lecture Performance – “Culture, for what it’s worth?”, Atrium e.V., Giessen
Consultant – Prater Konzept Team, Berlin

2018

Literary Conversation – With Ramy Al-Asheq, Literaturhaus Berlin
Lecture  – “Staging a body-based theory of justice”, Cairo International Festival for Contemporary and Experimental Theater
Speaker – Arts Rights Justice Forum, UNESCO Chair University Hildesheim
Talk & Discussion – 11th Deutsche Welle Global Media Forum, Bonn
Talk & Discussion – PEN World Voices Festival, New York
Speaker – Research Atelier “Cultural Policy and Arts Education”, UNESCO Chair University Hildesheim, Wolfenbüttel
Workshop Lead – “Dramaturgies of Resistance”, Annual Conference of the Dramaturgische Gesellschaft

2017

Workshop Lead – “Weltwandeln auf Französisch”, Institut franco-allemand, Frankfurt
Talk & Discussion – Litprom Literary Days: Weltwandeln in französischer Sprache

2016

Concept & Direction – Shakespeare Academy, international exchange programme with universities in Tunis, Hildesheim, Namur and Cairo, part of “Journées Théâtrales de Carthage”
Masterclass Lead – “The Art of Dramatic Writing”, Danish National School of Performing Arts, Copenhagen
Talk & Discussion – “Culture without Borders?”, Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, Berlin
Talk & Discussion – International Literature Festival Berlin
Talk & Discussion – International Literature Festival Odessa

2015

Talk – “Theatre and the Art of Disturbing the Public Order”, Cairo Academy of Arts
Workshop Lead – “Act Justice”, Junges Deutsches Theater Berlin
Panel Discussion – Festival Primeurs, Festival for Francophone Contemporary Theatre, Saarbrücken

Events

Initiator, co-organizer and co-moderator of: “(Un)Fair Practices: Cultural Policy Between Artistic Freedom and Political Control?” Conference together with Sonja Dinter, Julius Heinicke and Daniel Gad, DFG Research Training Group 2477 Aesthetic Practice in cooperation with the UNESCO Chair for Cultural Policy, December 5 - 7, 2024. https://www.uni-hildesheim.de/grk-2477/veranstaltungen/.

Co-organizer and co-moderator of: “Decolonial Aesthetic Practices?” International Annual Conference, together with Florentine Muhry, Thomas Lange and Sonja Dinter, DFG Research Training Group 2477 Aesthetic Practice, November 7 - 9, 2024. https://www.uni-hildesheim.de/grk-2477/jahrestagungen/jahrestagung-2024-1/.