give signs of a more subversive potential" (147)."11 The chiffonier rescues that potential in

forgotten objects-a series of chiffons, if you will-from the jaws of linear history, to

reveal an alternative order of things.

 The ragpicker's interest in outdated objects echoes Surrealism's affinity for old-

fashioned things. Using Breton's Nadja as his prime example, Benjamin argued that

Surrealism was "the first to perceive the revolutionary energies that appear in the

'outmoded,' in the first iron constructions, the first factory buildings, the earliest photos,

the objects that have begun to become extinct, grand pianos, [and especially] the dresses

of five years ago" ("Surrealism" 229). The Surrealists discovered how to release the

radical potential in these antiquated objects and create a world based on the uncanny

associations between them. Surrealism, for Benjamin, became an alternative mode of

writing, and the Surrealists became materialist historians fashioning history out of the

outmoded.

 Like the Surrealists, the ragpicker picks out unattended things, assemblingn] large-

scale constructions out of the smallest and most precisely cut components" (AP, "N [On

the Theory of Knowledge, Theory of Progress]" 461). Moreover, he echoes the surrealist

interest in chance, weaving together his rags like a mosaic, "rung by rung, according as

chance would offer a narrow foothold" (AP, "N [On the Theory of Knowledge, Theory of

Progress]" 460). The ragpicker's attention to outmoded details, his reliance on chance

encounters, and his ability to connect ideas and images through uncanny associations

rather than logical connections yield a method well suited for writing an associative

history, using cinematic moments that end up on the cutting room floor of the traditional

film historian. For in these moments, as in the old-fashioned fur coats of Classic