New Materialism

Abstract This review essay focuses on how the year’s work in new materialism builds on a vibrant discourse in literary studies and nascent, growing trends in postcolonial and indigenous new materialisms. A variety of new materialist works published in 2023, from the monographs Earthly Things: Immanence, New Materialisms, and Planetary Thinking and The Garden Politic: Global Plants and Botanical Nationalism in Nineteenth-Century America, to the journal article ‘New Materialism and Posthumanism in Roman Archaeology’, explore the ways in which the pillars of new materialist thought, such as the agentic capacity of vibrant matter, ‘speaking objects’, and entanglement, can lead to decolonial revelations about human culture and history. The essay is grouped according to common themes addressed in this year’s body of work: 1. Introduction; 2. Literature and Beyond; 3. Colonial Plants and Enslaved Objects; 4. New Materialism and Eco-Marxism; 5. Immanence and Planetary Thinking; 6. New (Materialist) Topics of Conversation in Science; and 7. Conclusion. The varied scholarship surveyed points to the conclusion that what was once seen as new materialism’s ethical weakness—its focus on matter over human beings—is now becoming a decolonial strength.