A few nights ago I read a Facebook post that really annoyed me; it was about a feminist thinker (whom I like) who was interviewed in a publication that I read frequently. The comment about her was disparaging. I did the mental calculus that we often do–was it worth it to carefully read the article and then respectfully explain the error in their thinking to the Facebook friend? I looked at the comments and saw a particularly nasty troll that I had seen go after women online respond emphatically and positively to the post. I decided against debate. I opened a tab and typed in Twitter instead.
Subtweeting is seductive. Not only do I get to say my (always right, by default) opinion online, every fav is a sulfurous little fire-work going off in my brain. By the end of a night of subtweeting, I not only have taken a stab at my never-to-be interlocutor, but 111, 354, or 4 other people have rallied by my side to say you’re right in a debate the context of which they could not possibly know. The first time I heard of subtweeting, I asked my very-online boyfriend at the time if I could subtweet my mom. “Is she on Twitter?” he asked? “Nope, she isn’t online at all.” “Then that’s not subtweeting that’s just saying something weird about your mom online.” The whole point of subtweeting is then the frisson I feel at the idea that my jibe just might be seen by its object. My object–a bad organizer, a reporter, an ex, a friend–might find my cutting 240-character quip and feel their error. And they’ll see those 111, 354, or 4 people agree with me about them, even if those followers faving don’t actually agree.
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I had an ex who really went off the rails, frighteningly so, after we broke up. Although I had blocked him and locked my social media accounts, he used friends’ accounts to look at my tweets. A mutual acquaintance described him quoting a tweet of mine with a snootful of coke, poised over a powdery bathroom sink. The tweet was a subtweet: “Never trust a young man who quotes Laura Kipnis.” An assumed slight to him since he, in fact, lamented the so-called sex panic of feminism before he was even a subject of it. But the tweet wasn’t even about him.
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Besides the electric feel of the subtweet, there are twin political phenomena that buoy its popularity. The first is the idea that to criticize is a political project in itself, regardless of result. This deep-searching for a problematic quality in any given text, movie, identity, personage is a warped sense of critical theory or critical practice. Critical theory thrives on specifics: the historical, the personal, the geographical. Perhaps this idea is the one good thing postmodern theory can offer. The problematic subtweet–the one that tries to articulate it–almost always drains it of its specificity. These tweets are framed as didactic, as being helpful, but they are not. They can’t possibly be because they lack the specificity needed to make them real often. The art of the subtweet refrains from naming names, the vaguer the better. The subtweet that points out something problematic cannot be an instructive moment, because it does not make the clear connection from object to lesson, and because its audience can so easily and grossly misinterpret its origin. The entire subtweet dynamic here undermines any critique as political project. The real life equivalent is a surprisingly common trope in organizing spaces. Just because a critique can be made, does not mean it should be made, without a goal, an audience, an effect in mind. The effect must be more than going viral or the jockeying of power among individuals.
The second political impulse is one close to my heart. When I first became a Marxist (or Marxist-y) everything was suddenly political. The movies I watched, the ads, my relationship with my father. It was exhilarating and then exhausting. This piece is not to pinch your lips and tell you to let people like things. Gramsci wouldn’t like that. The impulse I’m describing is when you personally don’t like someone, the new (or naive or cruel or stupid) Marxist will politicize this personal dislike. I don’t mean disliking a person because he’s a landlord (good dislike) or because his gender politics are bad and so he hates his girlfriend (good dislike), I mean because there are some people you simply don’t like and that’s okay. People who have the same or similar politics become politically distinct from you because they are, in fact, kind of an asshole. Or more frequently, they are corny. I am not here to tell you to let people like things; I’m here to tell you to let yourself hate people, no political reasons necessary. A Marxist loves to take their disdain for someone dating their ex or stealing their beer and recast it as class character. And then subtweet about it.
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The real dynamics of subtweeting became clear to me after I read that Facebook post. I did not address it, but dashed off something that was about its author in a little huff. I posted it. It got many likes. But it was so vaguely worded, I thought about all the people I knew who might sit there and wonder if it was about them. I remember seeing a subtweet that was about my very specific demographic recently from an organizer that I admired. I wondered if she had been thinking about me when she wrote it. I told myself that I didn’t know her well enough for her to hate me, but it wasn’t a comforting thought. I watched the notifications of the likes pop up for my subtweet, piling up on my phone screen like little flashing lozenges, and I sat thinking about the people who were liking it and nervous. Or the people sitting there looking at it and wondering if it was about them, when it wasn’t. I realized I was weighing the tiny toxic explosions of delight at the notifications, and the lie that I told myself that this was a helpful intervention, against the comfort of who knows how many people I admired or liked or even loved who thought that it was about them. The scale could never be close to even, what subtweet was worth that? I deleted it.
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I love critique; critique of political theory is probably the thing that I am best at in the whole world (much better than, say, writing my own political theory). I think criticism is an indispensible political practice when done right. And that there is nothing worse for a political project than being averse to critique, but to our comrades, that critique (sappily enough) has to come from a place of love or respect. Critiquing out of love always has to come with your name, rooted in your relationship with the object of critique. Show them you love them; use their @.
Political Theory & a Peony 