Chris Knight (anthropologist)

Chris Knight (born 1942) is a British anthropologist and political activist.

Professional

Following an MPhil in Russian Literature from the University of Sussex in 1975, Knight gained his PhD in 1987 at the University of London for a thesis on Claude Lévi-Strauss's four-volume Mythologiques. He became a lecturer in anthropology at the University of East London in 1989 and a professor at the same institution in 2000. Knight is a founding member of the "Radical Anthropology Group" (RAG). He is currently a Senior Research Fellow in the Department of Anthropology, University College London.

Since graduating from the University of Sussex in 1966, Knight has been exploring the idea that language and symbolic culture emerged in the human species through a process of Darwinian evolution culminating at a certain point in revolutionary change. Becoming human was, according to this theory, a classic instance of a dialectical process, i.e. one in which quantitative change culminates eventually in a qualitative leap. In pursuing this line of thought, Knight takes inspiration not only from modern Darwinian theorists such as Eörs Szathmáry and John Maynard Smith but also from Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, who in their later years were fascinated by what was then the new science of anthropology.

Published in 1991, Knight's first full-length book, Blood Relations: Menstruation and the origins of culture was favourably reviewed in The Times Higher Educational Supplement, The Times Literary Supplement and The London Review of Books; it also received publicity through an interview on the BBC World Service Science Now programme, a debate with Dr. Henrietta Moore on BBC Radio 4 Woman’s Hour, a front-page news report in The Independent on Sunday and Daily Telegraph and coverage in many other periodicals. The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute described Blood Relations as ‘a very readable, witty, lively treasure-trove of anthropological wisdom and insight.’ In April 1998, the Independent on Sunday featured a two-page article on Knight's work by science correspondent Marek Kohn, who described his approach as ‘drawing together some of the most dynamic lines of argument in current British evolutionary thought’. A dissenting voice was the Socialist Worker's Party's Chris Harman, who dismissed Knight's argument as "menstrual moonshine".

Although Knight's theory remains controversial, in the years since Blood Relations was published, it has become central to an increasing body of archaeological research and debate on how symbolic culture emerged in the human species.

In 1996, Knight co-founded the EVOLANG series of international conferences on the origins of language, since when he has become a prominent figure in debates on the origins of human symbolic culture and especially the origin of language. In recognition of his contribution to evolutionary linguistics, Knight was awarded the Evolutionary Linguistics Association’s Lifetime Achievement Award at an event held in Vienna in April 2014.

Activism

Initially a supporter of the Militant tendency, Chris Knight was later a founder editor of the journal Labour Briefing (he remains on the board) and has a long record of political activism. Knight defines himself intellectually as a Marxist.

During the build-up to the 2009 G-20 Summit in London, he was involved in a street theatre group known as The Government of the Dead. Statements he made at this time in an interview for the London Evening Standard (and the PM programme) led the Corporate Management Team at the University of East London to charge him with 'gross professional misconduct', 'insubordination' and 'bringing the university into disrepute'. He was suspended on 26 March 2009 and, despite a petition signed by 600 academics and others, was 'summarily dismissed' on 22 July 2009.

On 28 April 2011, Knight was one of three people arrested "on suspicion of conspiracy to cause public nuisance and breach of the peace". The three were planning a mock execution of the Duke of York in Central London the following day, to coincide with the wedding of Prince William and Catherine Middleton. On 30 November 2011, he was one of 21 'Occupy London' activists arrested and later charged with public order offences for occupying the Haymarket (Central London) offices of the mining company Xstrata. On 8 August 2012, Knight and his co-defendants were all found not guilty.

He supported Ken Livingstone in the controversy over allegdely anti-Semitic remarks made in 2016..

Books

• Decoding Chomsky: Science and revolutionary politics. London & New Haven: Yale University Press, 2016. ISBN 978-0-300-22146-6
• Blood Relations: Menstruation and the origins of culture. London & New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991. ISBN 0-300-04911-0.
• (ed. with R. Dunbar and C. Power) The Evolution of Culture. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press), 1999. ISBN 0-7486-1076-6.
• (ed. with M. Studdert-Kennedy and J. R. Hurford) The Evolutionary Emergence of Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. ISBN 0-521-78157-4.
• (ed. with R. Botha) The Prehistory of Language. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009. ISBN 978-0-19-954587-2.
• (ed. with R. Botha) The Cradle of Language. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009. ISBN 978-0-19-954585-8
• (ed. with D. Dor and J. Lewis) The Social Origins of Language. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014. ISBN 978-0-19-966533-4

Articles

• Puzzles and mysteries in the origins of language, Language and Communication, 50 (2016)12-21. PDF: lingbuzz/003141
• (with C. Power and I. Watts) The human symbolic revolution: A Darwinian account. Cambridge Archaeological Journal 5 (1), 1995, 75–114.
• (with C. Power) Grandmothers, Politics, and Getting Back to Science. In E. Voland, A. Chasiotis and W. Schiefenhövel (eds), Grandmotherhood. The evolutionary significance of the second half of female life. New Brunswick, New Jersey & London: Rutgers University Press, pp. 81–98.
• Early Human Kinship Was Matrilineal In N. J. Allen, H. Callan, R. Dunbar and W. James (eds), Early Human Kinship. London: Royal Anthropological Institute, 2008, pp. 61–82.
• The origins of symbolic culture. In Ulrich J. Frey, Charlotte Störmer and Kai P. Willführ (eds.) Homo Novus – A Human Without Illusions. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer-Verlag, 2010, pp. 193–211.

• (with C. Power) Arrest for Attempted Street Theatre. Anthropology Today, Vol. 28 No. 1, 2010, pp. 24–26.
• In Defence of Activism, Freedom, 18 June 2011.
• In Defence of 'Selfish Gene' Theory, Weekly Worker, No. 636, 2006.
• Marxism and Science, International Communist Current, June 2011.

• Noam Chomsky: The New Galileo?
• The Enigma of Noam Chomsky
• Decoding Chomsky
• Anti-marxist myth of our time
• The Pope and the Pentagon

• Solidarity and Sex
• Sex and the human revolution.

Radio Broadcast

• The origins of language. Word of Mouth' (Interview with Michael Rosen). Radio 4, January 2008.