The Ephemeral Public

Abstract

Under the conditions of a pandemic, we have recognised a form of public we identify as ‘ephemeral’. In this paper, we identify the constitutive components of the public pedagogical encounter that give rise to this theorisation. We address the place and time of the encounter, the knowledge that is central to this encounter, the educative agent as pedagogue, and the public as learner—in this case, it is an ephemeral public. Our reading focusses on the structure and nature of each of these. As the term ‘educative agent’ is a recent theorisation (Charman and Dixon, 2021) we have given particular attention to that. Our intent in this paper is to further understand the nature and dynamic of the public that is present in this encounter.