Émile Zola's novel 'Germinal' depicts the desperate lives of miners in 19th-century French mining towns. Director Claude Berry adapted it into a film of the same name in 1993. [Movie still]

Everyone understands the world through the lens of their own life. The things we've experienced, the words we've heard, the hurts we've endured, and the time we've lived through remain in our minds more strongly than any theory. What we experience directly stays with us longer than a sentence read in a book, and a single personal hardship is remembered more vividly than a statistical chart.

This is why people tend to start explaining the world with their own experiences. There's nothing strange about this; it's a completely natural inclination. It's because we naturally believe what we have lived through.

The Danger of Explaining the Entire World Through Personal Experience

The problem arises next. It occurs when our personal experiences don't stop at explaining our own lives but escalate to become the standard for explaining the entire world.

When what we have experienced becomes everyone else's reality, what we have seen becomes the truth of society, and what has hurt us becomes the essence of an era, then personal experience transforms from private memory into words used to judge the world.

At this point, the narrative no longer ends with "This is what happened to me." It expands to "Therefore, this is how the world is." This is precisely where the politicization of personal experience begins.

Literature has long been the most sensitive indicator of this shift. Characters in novels always speak of their own lives. They say, "I was poor," "I was ignored," "I was unloved," "I was oppressed." Initially, it's a single person's story. Readers perceive it as a personal confession.

However, some works don't stop at that confession. They magnify one person's misfortune into the misfortune of a whole class, expand one person's pain into the sin of an era, and transform one person's loneliness into the violence of the entire society. Literature is the genre most adept at this art of expansion.

This method is vividly apparent in the novels of Charles Dickens. Oliver in 'Oliver Twist' is a child. He is a hungry, beaten, and abandoned child. Readers initially witness the miserable life of an orphan.

But the novel soon expands the misery of one child into a critique of the entire poor relief system of Victorian England. Oliver is no longer just one child; he becomes a voice testifying to the cruelty of the system. This is a prime example of how individual suffering is translated into social criticism.

The Fallacy of Connecting Individual Pain to Systemic Problems

The same applies to Émile Zola's 'Germinal.' The novel begins with the arduous lives of a few miners. Hunger, mine collapses, low wages, and starving families are presented first. Initially, it appears to be the life of a single laborer. However, the novel does not leave this suffering as an individual misfortune.

It expands it into the conflict between capital and labor, class struggle, and the cruelty of the industrial order. Here, one person's life becomes politics. Readers, while reading about individual miners, end up reading about the entire social system.

In 20th-century literature, this approach becomes even more direct. Maxim Gorky's 'The Mother' begins with a domestic story of a woman. A drunken husband, a poor household, the son's transformation. The start is very personal.

However, the novel soon escalates the household's situation into revolutionary propaganda. The son's change becomes class awakening, and the mother's anxiety turns into participation in the revolution. The household's affairs become politics, and the family's language becomes the grammar of revolution. Personal experience is no longer personal; it is absorbed into the language of the organization.

At this point, literature creates a powerful illusion for the reader: "If this person suffered so much, isn't the entire society at fault?" Of course, such a judgment is possible. Individual suffering can be an important clue to societal problems. The issue arises when a clue becomes definitive proof.

A person's experience can be a starting point, but it cannot immediately become proof of universality. However, literature moves readers' hearts quickly. As a result, readers often conflate the two, accepting one person's experience as a verdict on the entire society.

Personal Experience is Only a Clue to Understanding Society, Not Proof

This approach has become even stronger in modern essays and autobiographical narratives. Many writings today begin with "This is what I experienced." They start with stories of being ignored at work, experiencing discrimination at school, enduring pain within the family, or facing imbalances in romantic relationships.

Initially, it's a confession. But the writing soon shifts to "Therefore, this society is sick." Generalizations begin, such as "Because I went through this, the entire society is like this." Personal experience is transformed into an assertion.

This process typically involves three stages. First, the experience occurs: "I went through this." Next, interpretation is added: "This was not an isolated incident but a societal problem." Finally, a norm is established: "Therefore, society must change." These three stages are the basic pathway for personal experience to transform into political language. While experience is originally private memory, the moment interpretation is added, it becomes public discourse, and the moment a norm is attached, it becomes political.

What needs the most caution here is not the experience itself but the authority of experience. People do not question their own experiences. They believe that while others' words can be wrong, what they have experienced cannot be wrong. This is why experience is powerful. It is difficult to refute, and criticizing it seems cruel. This is precisely why experience becomes so potent when used as political language, as it is faster than logic, stronger than statistics, and can easily push counterarguments into the realm of morality.

This point is also well-illustrated in Toni Morrison's 'Beloved.' Slavery was undoubtedly a vast systemic violence. However, Morrison does not explain it like a history book. She shows it through the body of a woman, the memory of a mother, the pain of a family. Readers experience the system not through logic but through suffering. Literature thus presents systemic issues embedded within individual pain. This method is powerful, and at the same time, very dangerous. It is because readers are easily prone to accepting one intensely painful case as the face of the entire society, instead of understanding the systemic problem.

Therefore, when reading literature, one must always ask: Is this one person's experience, or is it evidence of the entire society? Is this suffering an important case, or is it a fact that can be immediately generalized? Literature possesses a great power to move people. It is precisely because of this power that it must be read with greater caution.

Personal experience is a valuable clue to understanding the world. However, clues and evidence are different. One person's story can be a door to the world, but that single door is not the entire world.

◆ Songsan (송산)

Poet and researcher of history and philosophy. Former director of the Rhee Syngman Academy. Currently serves as an advisor to the Korean Modern and Contemporary History Research Association and as the representative of the philosophy forum Lyceum. He has published four poetry collections, co-translated 'Heroes of Hook Island,' and authored the humanities books 'Joseon, a Myth,' 'Humanities on the Tatami Mat,' and 'A Liberal's Reading of Gramsci.' Songsan is a pen name.