SSC CGL 2025 Tier-I · 23 September 2025, Shift 1 · English Comprehension · Question 10 of 100

We transcribed this text from the pictures on a candidate's response sheet for this shift; the answer is the key SSC colour-marked on that sheet. Solution last reviewed 13 September 2026.

In the following passage, some words have been deleted. Read the passage intently and choose the most appropriate option to fill in each blank:
To speak of the political as an abstract structure is, perhaps, already to concede to the logic of the archive: that which preserves through containment, and [1] _____ through its very naming. The subject here is neither born nor made—but suspended, deferred in the machinic interplay of signifiers. One becomes governable only to the extent that one appears, and to appear is already to capitulate to the syntax of recognition. Power, then, does not suppress but surfaces—it emerges in the folds of citation, in the gentle violence of classification. The biometric gaze is not ocular but computational; not what it sees, but what it does not allow to vanish. Resistance, if it resists at all, cannot be found in opposition, but in [2] _____—in the refusal to be coherent, in the grammarless whisper. The body, meanwhile, becomes a ledger: inscribed, decoded, re-encoded. What justice can exist in such a system? Not that of law, but of rupture. A justice that unbinds, that refuses the terms of its own invocation. It is not reparation that is sought, but [3] _____—the unworking of systems, the destitution of legibility. To enter this mode is to abandon appeal, to relinquish the comfort of meaning. One must instead submit to the possibility of a justice that never arrives, that remains [4] _____, excessive and unlocatable. Only then can we imagine a politics not of representation, but of presence without capture, of subjectivity without scaffolding. What remains, finally, is not identity but [5] _____—a presence that eludes, that persists in the absence of affirmation.

What should come in the place of blank number [3]?

(a)abolition
(b)restitution
(c)destitution
(d)reconciliation

Answer

Why

Correct — C. The sentence reads: 'It is not reparation that is sought, but [3] _____—the unworking of systems, the destitution of legibility.'

Not reparation ... but sets the blank against repair, so it must name an undoing.

The dash then restates the blank, and the restatement uses the word itself: 'the destitution of legibility'. Destitution here is a stripping-away, 'the unworking of systems' → option (c).

Why the others are wrong

(a)
abolition — The gloss after the dash reads 'the destitution of legibility', not abolition. Abolition, the formal ending of a system or practice, is close in sense, but the passage wants a justice 'Not that of law, but of rupture'.
(b)
restitution — Restitution means restoring what was lost or taken, close kin to reparation. The sentence has just said 'It is not reparation that is sought', so restitution brings back the idea it rejects.
(d)
reconciliation — Reconciliation restores friendly relations between parties. The passage wants the reverse: a justice 'that unbinds', a justice of 'rupture', not a mending of ties.

Concept

When a dash follows the blank, read past it. What comes after the dash restates the blank, here 'the unworking of systems, the destitution of legibility'.

The not X but Y frame narrows it further. X is reparation, so Y must be its opposite: an undoing, not a repair.

Destitute of means lacking or deprived of. That stripping-away sense, not the everyday one of extreme poverty, is what the passage means by destitution.

The passage is dense theory, but this blank needs none of it: the gloss after the dash repeats the keyed word.

Key facts

Restitution means restoring what was lost or stolen to its owner, or compensating for the loss.
Destitution in everyday use means extreme poverty.
Destitute of means lacking, as in a landscape destitute of trees.
Abolition is the formal ending of a system, practice or institution.

Study next

Reading the gloss after a dash or colon to fill a cloze blankNot X but Y contrast frames in cloze passagesLook-alike nouns: restitution, destitution, institution, constitution

Common traps

Picking restitution because it sounds like reparation, when the sentence rejects reparation.
Rejecting destitution as off-topic because you know it only as extreme poverty, when the gloss defines the sense used here.
Choosing abolition because it fits 'unworking of systems', without reading on to the gloss that names destitution.

Destitution is also keyed at 24 Sep 2025, 12:30, English Q.10, blank [3] of a different passage: 'to effect a [3] _______ of recognition's ontological architecture'.

This passage's blank [4] is English Q.11 and blank [5] is English Q.12.

Related PYQs

No directly related past PYQ was found.

In the following passage, some words have been deleted. Read the passage intently and choose the most appropriate option to fill in each blank:
To speak of the political as an abstract structure is, perhaps, already to concede to the logic of the archive: that which preserves through containment, and [1] _____ through its very naming. The subject here is neither born nor made—but suspended, deferred in the machinic interplay of signifiers. One becomes governable only to the extent that one appears, and to appear is already to capitulate to the syntax of recognition. Power, then, does not suppress but surfaces—it emerges in the folds of citation, in the gentle violence of classification. The biometric gaze is not ocular but computational; not what it sees, but what it does not allow to vanish. Resistance, if it resists at all, cannot be found in opposition, but in [2] _____—in the refusal to be coherent, in the grammarless whisper. The body, meanwhile, becomes a ledger: inscribed, decoded, re-encoded. What justice can exist in such a system? Not that of law, but of rupture. A justice that unbinds, that refuses the terms of its own invocation. It is not reparation that is sought, but [3] _____—the unworking of systems, the destitution of legibility. To enter this mode is to abandon appeal, to relinquish the comfort of meaning. One must instead submit to the possibility of a justice that never arrives, that remains [4] _____, excessive and unlocatable. Only then can we imagine a politics not of representation, but of presence without capture, of subjectivity without scaffolding. What remains, finally, is not identity but [5] _____—a presence that eludes, that persists in the absence of affirmation.