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I'm trying to figure out if there is a specific word, or more likely a term, for the concept of "returning somewhere after a long time away from it and it is no longer familiar to you."

For example: Coming back to your home town after many years away, and while there are some elements of familiarity, everything has changed so much that it doesn't feel the same.

I saw some answers in another thread talking about "derealization" and the French loan term "jamais vu" and while these seem close, I wanted to make sure I had done exhaustive research before settling on one of those.

Thanks!

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  • 'Jamais vu (“never seen”) is the experience of being unfamiliar with a person or situation that is actually very familiar.' ref. These dozen references are all neurological studies.
    – DjinTonic
    Commented Sep 18, 2021 at 19:15
  • Perhaps "a stranger in your own home town", but it's not a term and it's definitely not a single word.
    – Mari-Lou A
    Commented Sep 18, 2021 at 19:26
  • "The experience of being unfamiliar with a person or situation that is actually very familiar; associated with certain types of epilepsy...Use the term jamais vu when something happens which seems like it should be familiar but isn't. Some medical conditions can cause a sense of jamais vu in patients." vocabulary.com
    – DjinTonic
    Commented Sep 18, 2021 at 19:29
  • 1
    Reverse culture shock was what returned Peace Corps volunteers often called it. Commented Sep 18, 2021 at 19:46
  • "Derealization" is the name of a mental affection; there is not in it the description of a real state of mind, except if it is used for comparison; the process of comparison will ensure the reader that your feelings are not the abnormal feelings of someone who is mentally sick. (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derealization)
    – LPH
    Commented Sep 18, 2021 at 20:14

1 Answer 1

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There is no term for that; there are too many concepts involved (1- exposition again; 2- to a place that was familiar; 3- after many changes 4- but that has become partially unfamiliar because of "3"); moreover what this would define is the mere setting for something, that something being what one really wants to identify. This is just as regards the word "nostalgia"; the setting or circumstance for this concept is "1- thing from past; 2- remembering this thing", and "nostalgia" is the feeling of pleasure and sadness caused by this circumstance; this is the marrow of what we want to identify, the rest being a necessary basis but a skeleton without flesh. In my opinion, this is a concept that deserves a term, just as does "nostalgia", this being so because, evidently, many individuals have experienced that feeling and it seems to be very much the same for all, albeit this last contention should perhaps be verified.

"Distantiation" and its companion term "distantiated" are terms that are not so rarely used between scare quotes and that are often used in contexts of a more elusive nature than those of the plain figurative in which we readily identify the idea of removal from a given context. Further, they are terms, which are used in association with the terms "estrangement", "marginalization", "alienation" and "belonging"; these facts can be verified through a perusal of the following pages: distantiation, distantiated.

A very basically figurative example

(ref.) 'Distantiation' is the word that can be used to sum up the dozens of million of years that separate the paleolithic from man's first historical records.

It is clear that the associated terms referred to above are particularly relevant in the context of the query; the feelings are clearly those of not quite belonging any more, peharps of some sort of marginalization, in brief the feelings of not being quite from the place revisited.

Here is in another vein this idea of opposition between distantiation and belonging.

(The hermeneutical function of distanciation In previous studies, I have described the background against which I shall try to elaborate the hermeneutical problem in a way that will be significant for the dialogue between hermeneutics and the semiological and exegetical disciplines. The description has led us to an antinomy which seems to me to be the mainspring of Gadamer's work, namely the opposition between alienating distanciation and belonging. This opposition is an antinomy because it establishes an untenable alternative: on the one hand, alienating distanciation is the attitude that renders possible the objectification which reigns in the human sciences; but on the other hand, this distanciation, which is the condition of the scientific status of the sciences, is at the same time the fall that destroys the fundamental and primordial relation whereby we belong to and participate in the historical reality which we claim to construct as an object.

Although the term(s) is(are) not to my knowledge used in that way, it seems that it(they) could be specialized to this context; however, this is just an idea, and other considerations might provide good ground for not doing so.

Tentative sentences

  • As I went through the streets ten years later, distantiation ingrained in me skepticism as to whether I would ever again enjoy the place as I had once done.

  • She felt more and more distantiated as she strolled again through this neighborhood, a place where she had been raised but that she had left some twenty five years ago.

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