And We Shall Purify

Abstract

This article examines lustration, purgation, and commissions of inquiry as ameliorative practices within the larger practice of truth-seeking after cruelty, repression, and harm. While detailed case studies in specific times and places are valuable, the project of this article is to examine truth-seeking practices at a more abstract level. At that level and in an illustrative narrative, lustration, purgation, and commissions of inquiry are examined as constituting, and constituted by, intertwined expressions and instrumentalities of truth-seeking, cleansing, and purification. While the article cannot offer a thorough anthropological analysis of truth-seeking practices as purification rites, correspondences and analogies are noted and associated cautions offered. The aim is to refresh administrative thinking about truth-seeking practices and to urge attentive regard in transitions from cruelty, repression, and harm.