teaches Theory of Discourse and Epistemology of the Humanities at the Faculty of Philosophy, University of Ljubljana. Graduated from the University of Ljubljana in Sociology and Comparative Literature in 1968. Studied semiotics from 1969 – 1975 at l’Ecole pratique des hautes etudes, later École des hautes études en sciences sociales (Paris), with Algirdas J. Greimas. Obtained doctorat du troisième cycle in linguistics – literary semiotics at the Université de Paris X (Nanterre). In 1983, doctorate in sociology from the University of Ljubljana. Post-doctoral Fulbright fellow at the Department of Philosophy, University of California at Berkeley,1985. 1987-89 vice-rector of the University of Ljubljana – as the result of a campaign which led to the first fair and open election of the University leadership under the regime of the time.
As authoritarianism casts its shadow over modern liberal democracies, Rastko Mocnik identifies two forms of neo-fascism in Slovenia: one cultural, the other technocratic. Why have these emerged? What kind of social dynamic underpins them?
As all post-communist countries, the Balkans have been going undergoing profound transformations in the past decade that affect not only their political outlook but their social structures as well. Rastko Mocnic tracks some of the changes that are currently changing the sociological landscapes of the Balkans and questions the prevalent assumption that such transitions are the inevitable by-product of what the West refers to as “modernisation”.
