Monday, December 17, 2007

An Address

Today's Strange Maps shows a map of 'the island' in Lost, and in the discussion, there is a question about naming, an observation that it is peculiar that the island is un-named.  In one sense, the LAT-LON coordinates name the island, locate it, provide it with an address (I would repeat those numbers here but for the jinx). But the island is not named (Formosa!) in the conventional sense of toponyms.

The map itself displays layers of plausible locations (colored dots) and zones (rings) meant to match up with events over the first three seasons of the program. I find the map interesting because it surfaces at the same time I am reading and (sketchily) writing about archives, tagging and keywording, what Derrida in Archive Fever calls the archontic dimension--consignment, the gathering and piling on of signs.

What does the map archive? And where is the imaginary map between commencement (sequential) and commandment (jussive)?

I don't know.  I cannot settle this yet, and I am in no hurry. Lost is not even airing again for a couple of months, and then, only if the writers' strike is resolved. Nevertheless, I am--for these few minutes--taken on a detour through the map as a museum of Lost, of a topo-nomology embedded almost entirely in television (a domain, like many others, about which we must continuously ask, What is lost (er, diminished) in "legitimate hermeneutical authority" (3)?).

Posted by Derek Mueller at December 17, 2007 12:45 PM to Lost