Para Jumble: Panoptic Mechanism

CAT 2025 Slot 1 · Verbal Ability & Reading Comprehension · Hard · VARC

This is a hard Verbal Ability & Reading Comprehension question from the CAT 2025 Slot 1 paper. It tests VARC. The full answer key and a step-by-step explanation are below — try it yourself first, then reveal the solution.

The four sentences (labelled 1, 2, 3, and 4) given below, when properly sequenced, would yield a coherent paragraph. Decide on the proper sequencing of the order of the sentences and key in the sequence of the four numbers as your answer.

  1. It can in fact be integrated into any function (education, medical treatment, production, punishment); it can increase the effect of this function, by being linked closely with it; it can constitute a mixed mechanism in which relations of power (and of knowledge) may be precisely adjusted, in the smallest detail, to the processes that are to be supervised; it can establish a direct proportion between 'surplus power' and 'surplus production'.
  2. It's a case of 'it's easy once you've thought of it' in the political sphere.
  3. The panoptic mechanism is not simply a hinge, a point of exchange between a mechanism of power and a function; it is a way of making power relations function in a function, and of making a function function through these power relations.
  4. In short, it arranges things in such a way that the exercise of power is not added on from the outside, like a rigid, heavy constraint, to the functions it invests, but is so subtly present in them as to increase...
Answer

3142

Explanation

Sentence 3 introduces 'The panoptic mechanism' as the main subject. Sentence 1 elaborates on how it can be integrated into various functions. Sentence 4 provides a summary ('In short...'). Sentence 2 offers a final reflective remark on its political simplicity.

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