New Materialisms, as we learn from Govier and Steel, bear but a peripheral resemblance to what readers find in the article, Archaeology and the New Materialisms (henceforth “ArchaNeMs”). If one remains convinced that ontologies in the style of Jane Bennett’s vibrant materialism or, as the authors champion, Karen Barad’s agential realism are the only materialisms worthy of this label (Cipolla, 2018: 66n2; Govier, 2019; Harris and Cipolla, 2017: 191n74), then they are not mistaken in this assertion. As Govier and Steel suggest, there is much to these materialisms for archaeologists to contemplate. The compelling and sophisticated ontologies of Bennett and Barad admirably bid farewell to half-hearted renderings of the material world as “a recalcitrant context for human action” (Bennett, 2010: 111) and shatter the flagrant dualism of a passive, inert matter and an active, creative human mind. However, by subscribing to a heterogeneous world of ceaselessly quivering material configurations traversing one matter-energy (Bennett, 2010) or a dynamic relational ontology rooted in performatively intra-active phenomena (Barad, 2007), such ontologies appeal to a reductive hierarchy of existence that leaves little room for things as autonomous entities. It was in seeking an alternative to these New Materialisms that ArchaNeMs was written. For Barad, autonomous objects are but evanescent materializations caught up in an unceasing flow of relations (2007: 150). Things, therefore, are dismissed as merely derivative. This philosophical precept leads Govier and Steel to dedicate a large portion of their article to debunking things, the building blocks for ArchaNeMs, on the grounds that they are illegitimate pretenders to the title of New Materialisms. Indeed, by framing things as second-order entities the authors are, as a perfunctory matter, able to maneuver ruined aqueducts or abandoned herring factories wholesale into Barad’s critique of “thingification,” where such things “do not preexist,” but are “agentially enacted” (Ibid.). Yet, it is against such default taxonomic tendencies that ArchaNeMs grants such ruins dignity as autonomous

中文翻译：

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请真正的唯物主义向前走？

正如我们从 Govier 和 Steel 那里学到的那样，新唯物主义与读者在《考古学和新唯物主义》（以下简称“ArchaNeMs”）一文中发现的内容有一些相似之处。如果人们仍然相信简贝内特充满活力的唯物主义风格的本体论，或者作为作者的拥护者，凯伦巴拉德的代理现实主义是唯一值得这个标签的唯物主义（Cipolla，2018：66n2；Govier，2019；Harris and Cipolla，2017： 191n74），那么他们在这个断言中没有错。正如 Govier 和 Steel 所建议的，这些唯物主义有很多值得考古学家思考的地方。Bennett 和 Barad 令人信服且复杂的本体论令人钦佩地告别了将物质世界半心半意地描绘为“人类行动的顽固背景”（Bennett，2010：111），并打破了被动的公然二元论，惰性物质和活跃、有创造力的人类思维。然而，通过订阅一个不断颤动的物质配置的异质世界（Bennett，2010）或植根于表演性内部活动现象的动态关系本体（Barad，2007），这样的本体吸引了一种简化的存在层次结构这给作为自治实体的事物留下了很小的空间。ArchaNeMs 正是在寻找这些新唯物主义的替代品时才写成的。对 Barad 而言，自主对象只不过是被不断流动的关系所吸引的转瞬即逝的物化（2007：150）。因此，事物被认为仅仅是派生的。这一哲学戒律导致 Govier 和 Steel 将他们文章的很大一部分用于揭穿事物，即 ArchaNeMs 的基石，理由是他们是新唯物主义头衔的非法冒充者。事实上，通过将事物构建为二阶实体，作者们可以草率地操纵被毁坏的渡槽或废弃的鲱鱼工厂，将其批发到巴拉德对“物化”的批评中，其中这些事物“并不预先存在”，而是“主动地颁布”（同上）。然而，正是反对这种默认的分类趋势，ArchaNeMs 赋予了这种废墟自主的尊严