We turn to a case study of the Canadian actress and self-styled activist Mia Kirshner's multimedia project I Live Here to illuminate both the contradictions and the potential embedded in its construction of transnational subjects and addressees, as well as to resist the collapse of "transnational" into a presumed universalism of either capitalist or post-Enlightenment humanitarian sensibilities. In her recent scholarship, Chouliaraki traces the contemporary movement from these rhetorical practices to a new "post-humanitarian sensibility"-one she locates explicitly in mixed-media humanitarian appeals-that "breaks with pity and privileges a short-term and low-intensity form of agency, which is no longer inspired by an intellectual agenda but momentarily engages us in practices of playful consumerism." The humanitarian rhetorics she identifies at both poles, whether based on shared sentiment "in a moral economy of abundance, an economy where everyone can, in principle, feel for and act on distant suffering in an unrestricted manner" or appeals operating in an "economy of scarcity" and through the "individual judgment" of the consumer, pose particular challenges for a transnational feminist approach to gender-based rights violations. Such familiar humanitarian narratives comprise, as Lilie Chouliaraki writes, "rhetorical practices of transnational actors that engage with universal ethical claims, such as common humanity or global civil society, to mobilize action on human suffering." The rhetoric of exposure posits a liberal subject as its addressee who is ready and willing to respond to humanitarian appeals constructed through an "aesthetics of suffering," particularly in the form of indignation-inducing shock or the representation of victims who are "deserving" of aid or assistance. Symbolized in Amnesty International's candle illuminating the darkness, the rhetoric of exposure has long been a central trope of humanitarian discourse: the promise of revelation presumes that egregious violations are otherwise secret and that, in Thomas Keenan's words, "those agents whose behavior it wishes to affect-governments, armies, businesses, and militias-are exposed in some significant way to the force of public opinion, and that they are (psychically or emotionally) structured like individuals in a strong social or cultural context that renders them vulnerable to feelings of dishonor, embarrassment, disgrace, or ignominy." Despite the implausibility of these conditions, as well as the dangers of oversaturation, "mass and especially the image-based media" have only accentuated the ostensible self-evidence of this approach.
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