Abstract | Keywords | Export | Availability | Bookmark

Choose an application

• Reference Manager
• EndNote
• RefWorks (Direct export to RefWorks)

Discovering developmental stuttering’s biological explanation has been an enduring concern. Novel advances in genomics and neuroscience are making it possible to isolate and pinpoint genetic and brain differences implicated in stuttering. This is giving rise to a hope that, in the future, disfluency could be better managed if stuttering’s molecular basis could be better understood. Concurrent to this, there is another hope rising: a hope of a future where differing fluencies would not be viewed through a reductive lens of biology and associated pathologies. Drawing on critical disability studies and new materialist analysis, this paper demonstrates how the scientific hope of discovering stuttering’s biological explanation acts as an accessory of disablement and how this hope can be managed. Moreover, it is found that the paradoxical nature of the two hopes is not a necessity. An alternate conception is possible when the ethics of the future are viewed through a prism of intersubjectivity and responsibility.