Page 12 - Living Room WarsDesprately Seeking the Audience Rethinking Media Audiences for a Postmodern World

ongoing work. Furthermore, I wish to thank a great number of people who have in one
way or another given me intellectual or emotional feedback during the years that I was
working on this book. In alphabetical order: Mieke Aerts, Tjitske Akkerman, Hans
Boutellier, Charlotte Brunsdon, Jane Gaines, Larry Grossberg, Saskia Grotenhuis, John
Hartley, Vera Keur, Ben Manschot, Uta Meier, Peter Neijens, David Paletz Anil Ramdas,
Agnes Sommer, Louise Spence, Antoine Verbij and Ido Weijers. There were many
others, and I hope I have not offended them by not mentioning them here.
Last but not least, four people deserve to be mentioned for special reasons. First, I am
extremely grateful to my friend Dave Morley, who pairs a modest and open-minded
critical intellectualism with a delight in exploring the boundaries of politically sensitive,
non-dogmatic cultural studies, and was a careful reader of earlier drafts of this
manuscript. With my colleagues and friends Liesbet van Zoonen and Joke Hermes I had
the opportunity to explore the pleasures and frustrations of feminine and feminist
professionalism, and to share intellectual interests that were sometimes not easily
pursued. Their reliability and warm solidarity made the combination of writing a book
like this with the day-to-day requirements of being an overloaded university teacher into
a more than gratifying task. Finally, my thanks go to James Lull for his invaluable
contribution to the development of this book, and especially for his love and camaraderie,
for the joy and fun, for the wild enthusiasm and curiosity that we have shared about
everything having to do with media and culture. Our arguments were sometimes muy
picante, but always inspiring and passionate.
I.A.
January 1990