There is something uneasy about becoming a symbol. People may begin to recognise your face while knowing very little about what you say. They can admire your courage, put your name on a building and quietly leave the substance of your arguments alone.
Voice of America reports that Paris City Hall has unveiled a banner honouring Iranian Nobel laureate Narges Mohammadi. A public gesture like this gives someone a place in the shared attention of a city. People who were on their way to do something else may encounter a name they would otherwise never have sought out. That seems a reasonable use of a public building.
What follows matters, though. Recognition can open a conversation, or become a rather handsome way of considering the conversation finished.
Perhaps the responsibility of those looking at the banner is to resist knowing its subject only as an admirable person somewhere else. Admiration is comfortable at a distance. Listening takes longer, especially when someone’s words disturb assumptions we had hoped to keep.
There is a fair objection here: a banner cannot contain a life, explain a political situation or give every passer-by a serious education. Nor should every expression of solidarity be dismissed because it cannot accomplish enough. That would leave us with the peculiar rule that only people capable of solving a problem were permitted to acknowledge it.
Still, acknowledgement offers a beginning. We can follow a name into reliable reporting, seek out a person’s own public words where available, and notice the difference between what they have said and what others find convenient to celebrate.
This has an ordinary, sometimes uncomfortable counterpart. We do something similar to people close to us when we praise their strength so readily that they have little room to express exhaustion or disagreement. A compliment can become a job description.
Public honour is worth taking seriously enough to move beyond the pleasing image. The person being honoured may have more demanding things to say than the tribute allows. Making room for those things, without requiring them to be convenient or reassuring, gives the gesture somewhere to go.