Do we need custodians of knowledge?

What is a custodian? A custodian has a responsibility to protect a field of knowledge. Through that responsibility, a custodian has the power to influence this field of knowledge by controlling what affects it. Custodians appear in many forms: critics, researchers, academics; executives in large firms and high-ranking officials in governments. A custodian has a connotation of being ethical, moral, and one with expertise in their field. The consensus of custodians should theoretically follow a democratic process. However, that is not always the case in practice. An unethical custodian may have vested interests, or other questionable beliefs that damage the trustworthiness of their expertise. An unethical custodian may have the power to influence a field of knowledge with harmful ideas. Such situations are unethical, arguably immoral, yet take place often in the real world.  

This essay seeks to explore this question based on these parameters with reference to the arts and human sciences as AOKs. The arts and human sciences are similar; both examine human behaviour and emotions. It is their approach that sets them apart. According to Socrates, in Plato’s Ion, art is effectively the product of inspiration. Such is the qualitative, subjective, and raw process of art. On the other hand, the human sciences use scientific methods, hypotheses, and experiments to prove their point. By taking a stringent procedure, ‘human scientists’ seek stringent truths. So stringent that learnings from their research are facts of life. These differences will affect the requirement for custodians and how it affects knowledge-production in the respective AOKs.

This essay will first answer whether custodians are required at a fundamental level in the arts. Secondly, the implications of unethical custodians will be discussed and how it reaffirms the role of custodians.  

In the arts, critics are the most significant custodians; they influence trends, technique, and knowledge-producers (painters and writers for example). In literature, custodians most significantly distinguish between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ texts. However, in the arts, such value judgements are not accurate; this argument shows how the mercurial nature of art undermines attempts at custodianship. The first example involves The Recognitions, a novel by William Gaddis. Published in 1955, it is now considered one of the pinnacles of postwar literature and a precedent for the postmodern literary tradition.¹ Though when it was first published it was considered overly prolix, abstruse, and thus, was not well received. Such perceived qualities of the text made it a piece of ‘bad’ literature to the critics. In this case the critics were custodians, aiming to protect readers and the western canon from bad literature. Yet the novel was popular with a smaller subset of readers that enjoyed niche genres. Still, Gaddis was disappointed by the reception and took twenty years to publish his next book, JR. In contrast, it was extremely well received, winning the National Book Award; considering JR’s success, critics reevaluated The Recognitions and began to finally praise it.² 

This example shows how custodians can be wrong and damage a talented writer and their work’s success. In turn, this impacts knowledge-development in the arts. If custodians discourage readers from a text, it will not enter the lexicon of literature. Specific techniques within the text may not be appreciated which other budding writers may have benefited from. The fact that it was popular in niche crowds shows the malleability of art’s meaning; a custodian’s expertise is inevitably restricted by the limit of their personal experience. A critic may have grown up disposed to the classics and now does not appreciate literary experimentation; a critic of a different faith may not have understood the protagonist’s desire to distance themself from a deep catholic upbringing. No matter the academic, literary, or aesthetic expertise one has, a custodian is one person limited by their individual experience. They will not always be able to do justice to a piece of art. Considering this and the malleability of art’s meaning and interpretation, custodians cannot entirely be justified. Niche readers may find lots of beauty in a work like The Recognitions while mainstream critics as custodians cannot; if the objective of a critic is to find beauty, share it, and protect literature with such prowess that ordinary readers cannot do the same, then their role is redundant. ‘Bad’ literature does not exist.  

In certain cases, custodianship can be justified where there is an ethical breach with lives. Using Socrates’ definition, Petr Pavlensky is a highly inspired Russian performance artist who carries out political performances often through self-mutilation. Can he be considered an artist still? In 2012, Pavlensky sewed his mouth shut in a piece called Seam. In 2014, he cut off a portion of his ear in protest of the political abuse of psychiatry in Russia; it was called Segregation. Can the endangerment to life overrule the status of ‘art’? Or would exceptions undermine the broad definition of art? However, a bigger point can be made. If life under a government is so horrific that people must harm themselves and others to create a message, then there are bigger problems to be solved than the parameters of art. In this case, custodians would be required to redefine art; to discourage harmful performances and direct attention to the hegemonies people are protesting.  

Human Sciences: 

The argument in the arts says that, fundamentally, custodians would not be required. However, in the human sciences, the unethical custodian will be explored which, to an extent, reaffirms custodianship. If custodianship is justified where life itself is concerned, it largely applies to the human sciences whose purpose is to objective truths about life. 

The first example involves psychology and seeks to establish unethical custodians as an idea and fact. Dan Ariely, a famous behavioural scientist, was surrounded by controversy when a group of data scientists challenged Ariely’s findings in an influential 2012 research paper he co-authored. The scientists claimed that the data had been fabricated. The data was from an experiment Ariely conducted with an insurance company; customers had to fill out a form on their odometer readings. Typically, the company placed the signature at the bottom of the form. Ariely asked to place it on top and according to the research, this improved the ‘honesty’ of customers; it increased the awareness of one’s accountability thus impacting honesty. However, the scientists said that this data did not follow ordinary statistical distribution. The insurance company said they gave Ariely data for 3,700 policies, yet Ariely’s published dataset had more than 13,000. 

Evidently, Ariely was an unethical custodian of knowledge here. He faked data in order to prove his hypothesis and maintain his academic repute. This damaged the knowledge-production process and incorrectly informed knowledge-acquirers. This ‘knowledge’ would have impacted such people to take wrongly-informed choices. In the academic sphere, this paper influenced other researchers, who came to similar findings, once again having a harmful effect on people.

This does not mean that, to a large extent, custodians are not required like in the arts. This means that they are required in this AOK; the data scientists acted as ethical custodians, exposing mendacious practices and helping the cycle of producing and acquiring knowledge. This is explored further in the final example.

The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis says people from various cultures are different because of distinctions in their language.⁵ It acts as linguistic determinism. Now, it has widely been rejected though some researchers are still exploring it. One of the key people to reject it was Noam Chomsky. This builds on the idea that unideal custodians can propagate potentially harmful ideas. If one decided to think by linguistic determinism, it could be detrimental; it would be a self-limiting ideology where people are bound by factors such as nationality and its concomitant language that they could not decide. Still, Chomsky disproving it shows that there are custodians who are pursuing the truth and are not motivated by academic vanity. Chomsky can be considered an ethical custodian. Ideas that are intriguing but potentially harmful are not always worth spreading through research with the dogma of scholarship. In technical fields like the human sciences, having such custodians is important because such subjects can directly influence and impact lives. Without custodians, there would be no unethical custodians as their misdoings would not be found out. Their academic prestige and status as ‘custodians’ would inhibit that. Our knowledge, thus, would be fundamentally flawed without people realising. Custodians must safeguard knowledge production and be democratic in their consensus with a sensitive subject like the human sciences. 

 To conclude, whether custodianship is required or not depends on the field of knowledge. Within the arts, where diversity of interpretation is its backbone, custodians undermine that and are fundamentally redundant. However, in the human sciences, the dynamic is more complicated. A lack of custodianship can be detrimental yet custodians themselves can have many negative influences that, unbeknownst to the knowledge-acquirer, are present in the ideology. The only way to solve this would be to emphasise a democratic process that keeps in the mind the implication of such ideologies.