SSC CGL 2025 Tier-I · 23 September 2025, Shift 1 · English Comprehension · Question 9 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 [2]?

(a)conditionality
(b)aesthetic refusal
(c)algorithmic agency
(d)asymbolic opacity

Answer

Why

Correct — D. The trigger is the dash and the repeated in: 'in [2] _____—in the refusal to be coherent, in the grammarless whisper'. The phrases after the dash restate the blank.

So the blank must name a way of being unreadable: incoherent, outside grammar.

Asymbolic opacity fits. A- 'without' + symbolic puts it outside signs and language, and opacity means not letting anything be seen through → option (d).

Why the others are wrong

(a)
conditionality — Conditionality is the state of depending on conditions. Nothing in 'the refusal to be coherent, in the grammarless whisper' concerns terms or conditions, so the restatement after the dash does not fit it.
(b)
aesthetic refusal — Aesthetic refusal borrows the word refusal from the phrase after the dash, which makes it tempting. But what is refused there is coherence, being readable, not an artistic stance.
(c)
algorithmic agency — Algorithmic agency is rule-bound action by computation, which the passage gives to power: 'The biometric gaze is not ocular but computational'. Resistance here is the grammarless whisper, the opposite of rule-bound.

Concept

The dash here introduces a restatement. The same preposition, in, heads the blank and each phrase after the dash, so they are parallel: the blank and 'the refusal to be coherent' name one thing.

The argument points the same way. The passage says 'to appear is already to capitulate to the syntax of recognition'. If being seen and read is how one is governed, resisting means becoming unreadable.

Later it speaks of 'the destitution of legibility', the same idea from the other side.

Asymbolic is a rare word, but it can be decoded. The prefix a- means 'not' or 'without', as in atypical and amoral, so asymbolic is 'without symbols'.

Key facts

A dash can introduce a phrase that restates or explains what comes just before it.
The prefix a- means 'not' or 'without': atypical, amoral, asymmetric.
Opacity is the quality of being opaque: not letting light through, or, figuratively, being hard to understand.
Conditionality is the state of depending on conditions.

Study next

Cloze blanks decided by a restatement after a dash or colonOpposite pairs in abstract prose: opacity and transparency, legibility and illegibilityThe Greek prefix a- or an-, 'without': asymbolic, anonymous, anarchy

Common traps

Choosing aesthetic refusal because it repeats the word refusal from the phrase after the dash
Choosing algorithmic agency because the passage mentions computation, without noticing that computation is on the side of power

Blank [1] of the same passage is English Q.8, keyed reifies, 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.