The Hollowing-out of the Public Sphere or Its Re-spatialisation? A Topological Probe in the Case of Expert Advice to the Education System

This paper focuses on the modern technocratic idea of independent science advising the independent public and consequential criticism of the hollowing-out of the public sphere by expertocracy. Going beyond this misleading diagnosis, I focus on current places where the public sphere is produced using social topology and the notion of a sociotechnical imaginary that is publicly performed. Through an exploratory probe into a current facet of the ambiguous relationship between the public and expertise, I analysed the contexts, paths, and practices of a normative and expert document published annually by a Czech NGO to bring to the fore the difference between expertise as navigation to public debate, expertise as creating one’s own public space, and expertise as a normative performance. All these forms of relationship between expertise and the public, in a way, transgress the modern sociotechnical imaginary of the direct effect of expert knowledge on public issues.