This proposal focuses on forms of education that exist in contemporary initiatives to recover Europe and consequences that these forms have for action in our common decision over education. The research case is various recovery plans of Europe after Covid. Interestingly, education appears in two forms: a means and an end of recovery. Through the social topology of agency, I scrutinise the patterns that enabled or prevented some action looking at a whole range of elements involved in it – positions for action, actors, audiences, rationalities, logics of work, and justifications.

During the Covid pandemic, various European-scale initiatives for recovery appeared, notably the European Commission’s program NextGenerationEU (NGEU), which is explicitly aimed at the “recovery of Europe which works for everyone”. This recovery is strongly pedagogised (of and through education) and connected to technology as a solution and as an end (digitalisation). This recovery project models the educational future significantly since it is connected to generous funding and, formally, to the national governments.

However, the case of taking up the NGEU by local governments involves many new relations among actors, labour, technics, and reason. These new relations unsettled the taken-for-granted geographies and jurisdictions and revealed that the problem of agency and the problem of existence of Europe(s) are entangled and relational precisely in connection to education. The new relations of distancing and reaching (Allen, 2020) among actors, positions, rationalities, and audiences have consequences for a specific division of education. Not only various Europes may exist but also various worlds of education – and this division is not necessarily balanced and equal (Mitescu-Manea et al., 2021). Through field research in the public debates and desk research of media entries and documents, I will demonstrate how education as means and as an end brings two worlds while excluding the latter from public action. Specifically in the Czech context, if education is the solution to something else, it is less of education (Wirthová & Barták, 2023). However, this argument needs more comparative research. Modern topographies of education and especially positions of educational actors are changed within these recoveries – the possibility of agency is inscribed in different coordinates (and this also troubles how to imagine human agency in it because modern imaginaries are based on subject). Therefore, I am focused on the new ecology of agency which distances and diversifies education as a means and an end.

My theoretical approach is driven by recent social topology (Allen, 2016; Decuypere et al., 2022; Massey, 2005), but I connect it with two scholars’ accounts on subjectivity for the purpose of accessing to the relation between forms of action and forms of education which is enacted/materialised through production and placing of subjectivity. Engaging in the late thinking of Jan Patočka, a Czech philosopher dealing with the existence of Europe (Francesco Tava & Meacham, 2016; Patočka, 1999, 2018) and space (Patočka, 2016), we can see that modern objectivity and rationality is impossible without subjectivity; and who has the subject can seize the object, which was generalised to the degree of “falling Europe”. Engaging in the thinking of relational sociologist Jean-Sébastien Guy, we can see, however, that subjectivity and identity are produced in so-called non-metric forms (Guy, 2019), which generates groups, not in metric forms generating flows. In that, only those may “have the object” who are in non-metric forms, while flows do not produce identities. I will demonstrate how these topological practices of subject/action is entangled in the division of education into worlds of the flow of toilers of the education and the group of men of change which do not overlap with traditional jurisdictions.

How education exists in contemporary initiatives to recover Europe, in which forms, and what consequences do these forms have for action are the research questions. Methodology grasping this complex problem is three-fold. Research already begun with a Czech case of enacting Europe with a prospect of broader comparative research, which I am proposing through this contribution. 1) Ethnography of public debates (Mosse, 2011; Ohm, 2013) – observation of Czech debates organised by EU, governmental, as well as private and NGO actors devoted to recovery plans and education, e.g Annual Conference on the National Recovery Plan organised by European Commission and the Ministry of Industry and Trade. This ethnographic work focuses on the knowledge and legitimation practices of communities of advisors, consultants, policy makers, etc. - those involved in the construction and transmission of ideas and knowledge about recovery of Europe. 2) Qualitative content analysis of media entries (Newton Media Archive) from May 2020 to end of the year 2022 (lemma: “education”, “recovery plan”, “europe”) and strategic documents from governmental and civil society sphere. Sociological discourse analysis (Herzog, 2016) focused on different normative claims and their respective type of transcendence (universality) they claim that set the positions for possible actors and audiences. 3) Comparative research, in progress: Not only various Europes but also various worlds of education are very likely by taking up the NGEU by local governments. Comparatively, I expect variants of these enactments and precisely the variations in relations among these elements: positions for action, possible actors, possible audiences, rationalities, logics of work, and justifications. However, the methodology cannot proceed through methodological statism, because it acknowledges the shifted modern boundaries (Robertson & Dale, 2008), nor displace the nation-states from the analysis since still these are the nation-states, who as “members” of the EU gain the funding. The same applies to methodological statism since it is the state government that has formally the responsibility for accounting to the EU about the implementation of the funds. But it is obvious that these formal structures are not solely structures arising during the planning and enacting of the recovery plans, imaginaries and reasons. We know from recent research how the forms are entangled (Hartong & Piattoeva, 2019), and therefore it is worth maintaining both perspectives on elements to incorporate in the analysis. In the next steps I would like to invite other scholars from forms different European contexts to collaborate on this topic.

Although metric and non-metric forms are analytical categories, in the case of recovery, they become politicised (Guy, 2019, pp. 253–258) – they have consequences for the possibility of presence and agency of many actors who were placed in a space which has not an access to the general debate about the recovery of “our society”. In Czechia, Europe and the recovery of society was publicly translated as economic recovery; economic rationality prevailed as well as economic actors. Directors of prominent banks have a stronger voice and visible name than “toilers of education” in debates about education for “something” and approximate European recovery as universally economical. They connected easily with other actors thinking similarly, for example, quantitative researchers from private firms. Rationality and expertise met in this and provided space for normative articulations “about” education. This relationally produced a world “of” education entangled in residual space of flow, which has no direct access to imagining, planning and decision about recovery “of our societies”. The action of actors as teachers, school directors, officials from the Ministry of education, was displaced by placing their subjectivity in flows - toilers of the education who do education as an end. They were no-name people “of” education for several reasons, some of which bear heritage from previous educational reforms (Wirthová, 2021). Although topologically bypassing formal jurisdictions, modern identity was transferred. The groups of “men of change” were produced through topologized proximities based on non-metric identities. This produced space “about” education, education as a means, and enabled the position to take education as an object to talk/decide/plan about – to be external to education. The internals (toilers of education) in the residual space “of” education does not have access to such an externality, hence grasping education as an object.

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