Abstract
This paper explores the semiotic status of algebraic variables. To do that we build on a structuralist and post‐structuralist train of thought going from Mauss and Lévi‐Strauss to Baudrillard and Derrida. We import these authors’ semiotic thinking from the register of indigenous concepts (such as mana), and apply it to the register of algebra via a concrete case study of generating functions. The purpose of this experiment is to provide a philosophical language that can explore the openness of mathematical signs to reinterpretation, and bridge some barriers between philosophy of mathematics and critical approaches to knowledge.
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