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Question

In the given passage, some words have been deleted. Read the passage intently and choose the most appropriate option to fill in each blank:

In the contemporary epoch of algorithmic governance and hyper-networked economies, the discourse of agency has undergone a paradigmatic mutation. No longer anchored in traditional notions of volition or deliberation, subjectivity is increasingly (1)____ by ambient infrastructures that anticipate, nudge, and pre-empt decision-making before cognition consolidates intention. In such a regime, autonomy becomes retroactive—a post-facto narrative stitched together by feedback loops of personalization, predictive modeling, and biometric calibration. The liberal ideal of the rational actor, so central to modern jurisprudence and economic theory, finds itself (2)____ under the weight of distributed cognition, machinic interpellation, and environmental scripting. Agency, in this schema, is not exercised but programmed; it is neither given nor seized but orchestrated through micro-environmental cues and algorithmic affordances. The individual becomes less a sovereign self than a (3)____ node in a probabilistic matrix of behavioral speculation. Within this ontological reconfiguration, resistance too undergoes a semiotic shift. Acts of refusal no longer manifest through overt defiance but through obfuscation, misalignment, and withdrawal from legibility. Yet even these gestures risk being (4)____ by the very systems they attempt to subvert—recuperated as marketable deviance, branded subcultures, or managed dissent. If every deviation is eventually re-circulated as novelty, then the terrain of the political itself becomes (5)____—evacuated of antagonism and steeped in simulation.

What should come in the place of blank number (1)?

This question was previously asked in
SSC CPO 2025 Paper 1 Question Paper (9-Dec-2025) (Shift 2)
The correct answer is

mediated

The sentence says subjectivity is “increasingly ____ by ambient infrastructures that anticipate, nudge, and pre-empt decision-making”. The infrastructures stand between the person and the decision, shaping it — they act as intermediaries.

“Mediated” means brought about or influenced through an intermediary, so “subjectivity is increasingly mediated by ambient infrastructures” fits exactly and matches the passage’s idea that agency is “orchestrated through micro-environmental cues”.

“Foreclosed” (shut off completely) is too absolute for “increasingly … nudge”; “automated” would mean subjectivity is run by machines, which does not suit “nudge”; “colonized” implies takeover by an outside power and is too strong for infrastructures that only anticipate and nudge.

Hence, blank (1) should be filled with mediated.

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Important Questions from Cloze Test

  1. What would come in place of 1

  2. What would come in place of 2

  3. What would come in place of 3

  4. What would come in place of 4

  5. What would come in place of 5

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