To provide this:
print map(asterisk(operator.sub), [[-20, 20], [-20, 20], [32, 32]])
You should use
from itertools import starmap
print starmap(operator.sub, [[-20, 20], [-20, 20], [32, 32]])
P.S. As far as I know, there is no built-in functions for such functionality in Python. Some time ago, I talked in Python mailing list about lack of "apply" functionality, which is more "general" questions. I think, something like operator.apply(f, args)
will be good for many cases. This functional representation for function application can also except argument about arguments passing model.