SSC CGL 2025 Tier-I · 23 September 2025, Shift 1 · English Comprehension · Question 12 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 [5]?

(a)fugitive form
(b)spectral coherence
(c)passive unity
(d)ontic recurrence

Answer

Why

Correct — A. The sentence reads: 'What remains, finally, is not identity but [5] _____—a presence that eludes, that persists in the absence of affirmation.'

The gloss after the dash is the trigger: a presence that eludes. Fugitive means fleeing or escaping capture, so a fugitive form is a presence that slips away.

It also echoes the passage's earlier 'presence without capture', and it is the opposite of a fixed identity → option (a).

Why the others are wrong

(b)
spectral coherence — Coherence is what the passage refuses: resistance lies 'in the refusal to be coherent'. Spectral (ghostly) might suit a presence that eludes, but the noun it qualifies undoes the fit.
(c)
passive unity — Unity is a fixed, gathered whole, close to the identity the sentence rejects with 'not identity but'. Passive also sits badly with a presence that actively eludes and persists.
(d)
ontic recurrence — Recurrence means coming back again and again, but the gloss describes a presence that eludes, slipping away rather than returning. Ontic, relating to actual existing things, adds nothing that fits.

Concept

The final blank sums up the passage, and the passage has described one thing throughout: a subject that escapes capture. It speaks of 'presence without capture' and 'subjectivity without scaffolding'.

Fugitive as an adjective means escaping or hard to catch, and also fleeting. A fugitive form is a shape that will not stay fixed, which is 'a presence that eludes'.

Each wrong option carries a noun that clashes: coherence and unity are what the passage refuses, and recurrence is a returning, not an eluding.

Spectral is the tempting adjective, since a ghost is a presence that eludes. Read the whole option: its noun, coherence, is what the passage refuses.

Key facts

Fugitive (adjective): escaping or hard to catch, and also fleeting, as in a fugitive thought.
Spectral: of or like a ghost.
Ontic: relating to real, existing things.
Coherence: the quality of being logical, consistent and unified.

Study next

Reading the gloss after a dash to fill a cloze blankTwo-word options: check the noun as well as the adjective against the passageFugitive, fleeting, transient and ephemeral

Common traps

Choosing spectral coherence on the adjective alone, when the passage prizes 'the refusal to be coherent'.
Knowing fugitive only as a noun, a person on the run, and missing its adjective sense of fleeting or elusive.

The 'not X but [blank]—' frame, with the blank glossed after the dash, also ends a passage at 24 Sep 2025, 12:30, English Q.12: 'freedom is not recuperative but [5] _______—a rupture from taxonomic legibility', keyed apophatic.

In this passage the same frame decides blank [3], English Q.10.

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.