SSC CGL 2025 Tier-I · 23 September 2025, Shift 1 · English Comprehension · Question 8 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 [1]?

(a)extinguishes
(b)reifies
(c)evacuates
(d)dissimulates

Answer

Why

Correct — B. Read the clause whole: 'that which preserves through containment, and [1] _____ through its very naming'.

The and makes the blank a second verb for the archive, parallel to preserves. So it must also describe holding and fixing what the archive contains, not destroying or hiding it.

Reifies does. To reify is to turn something abstract into a fixed, concrete thing, from Latin res, 'thing'. The opening sentence is about exactly that move: speaking of the political as an abstract structure → option (b).

Why the others are wrong

(a)
extinguishes — Extinguishes means puts out or wipes out. Joined by and to preserves, it would have the archive keeping and destroying in the same breath.
(c)
evacuates — Evacuates means empties or removes. The archive 'preserves through containment', holding things in, so emptying them through naming would reverse the first half of the clause.
(d)
dissimulates — Dissimulates means conceals or disguises. The passage has power working in the open: it 'does not suppress but surfaces'. Naming fixes a thing in view rather than hiding it.

Concept

In a cloze on dense prose, grammar narrows and logic decides. All four options are present-tense verbs ending in -s, so grammar cannot choose here.

The logic comes from the and: the archive preserves through containment, and does a second, matching thing through naming.

The passage keeps building on this. Power 'emerges in the folds of citation, in the gentle violence of classification', so naming is a way of fixing and holding. Reify, to make an abstraction into a thing, is that act.

The passage is written in the abstract idiom of critical theory. You do not need to follow its whole argument: find the word each blank is paired with or set against, and let that pairing choose.

Key facts

Reify: to regard or treat something abstract as if it were a concrete, material thing.
Reify comes from Latin res, 'thing', + -fy, 'to make'.
Dissimulate: to hide one's real feelings or intentions, to disguise.
Evacuate: to empty, or to move people out of a place.

Study next

Cloze blanks whose direction is set by and or butFormal verbs of fixing and erasing: reify, codify, efface, obliterateDissimulate against simulate: concealing what is there against feigning what is not

Common traps

Choosing a word of destruction because the passage sounds critical of the archive, when the clause itself says it preserves
Reading dissimulates as if it meant simulates, to imitate, when it means to conceal

Blank [2] of the same passage is English Q.9, keyed asymbolic opacity, and blanks [3] to [5] are English Q.10 to Q.12, keyed destitution, incalculable and fugitive form.

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.