International Civil Religious Pilgrimage: Gallipoli and Dialogical Remembrance

Abstract

This chapter argues that global forces can work to re-enchant national identity by examining a new form of transnational commemoration: international civil religious pilgrimage. This pilgrimage rite involves the act of visiting a site sacred within the history of the traveler’s nation but which is located outside its sovereign territory. The cultural significance of this rite for re-enchanting the nation is explored within a study of Australian travelers touring the WWI Gallipoli battlefields in Turkey. This case points to the role of travel experiences and tourist entrepreneurs in propagating new national histories and identities across traditional frontiers, characterized by what Bakhtin (1984) terms dialogical discourses.