In "Counterfeit Money", Derrida suggests that fiction and counterfeit money share a common characteristic - each is a fiction passed off as truth:
 
  The (fictive) narrative is by right produced by the fictive narrator; but like the narrator, the narrative is fictive only between Baudelaire and us…since the fictive narrator produces his narrative as a true narrative and therein consists the fiction - or the simulacrum produced by the author. This is what is seems to share with the phenomenon of counterfeit money (to pass off a fiction as "true"). (Derrida, Given Time 93)
 
However, Derrida also recognises that although fiction and counterfeit money share this same general condition, there is a distinct difference between the two. Unlike counterfeit money, where deception is a necessary element, fiction is only passed off as truth within the narrative. Beyond the narrative, the reader and the author recognise the conventions of fiction and therefore are never deceived that the fiction is true. It is this quality of fiction that results in the phenomenon of a secret without secret, that is, a secret that is always intended to be revealed. Derrida writes:
 
  But since the convention permits us to know - Baudelaire and us the readers - that this fiction is a fiction, there is no phenomenon here of "counterfeit money", that is, of an abuse of trust that passes off the false for the true. It remains the case, however, that the possibility of counterfeit money, of the effect of counterfeit money, shares the same general condition: to pass off a fiction as true. To be sure, dishonesty or the criminal misdeed has no place in literature, "within" the literary phenomenon delimited at its borders by conventions. Baudelaire is not lying, he is not deceiving. Outside literature, but in life such as it is represented, imagined, recounted in a fiction like "Counterfeit Money", the moral fault or the criminal misdeed implies lying, the intention to deceive - and thus knowledge - only on the part of the emitting agent or the counterfeiter, to the exclusion of the receiver or the "dupes" (the reader, for example, or the narrator before his friend's confession and, outside the narrative, in a heterogeneous space, the reader at least preceding the same confession; but the reader is not "deceived" or "duped" in the same sense as the narrator: in truth, his non-knowledge is not on the order of being-deceived; it is the experience of a secret without depth, a secret without secret…). (93-94)

 
In light of this argument, what is the effect of a text that self-consciously flaunts the literary conventions that allow a fiction to be recognised as a fiction?

A metafiction "self-consciously and systematically draws attention to its status as an artefact in order to pose questions about the relationship between fiction and reality" (Waugh 2). Thus, the medium of metafiction allows language to subvert and tells truths via the power of lies or imagination; thus metafiction is often employed in post-colonial writing to speak about 'unspeakable' truths that have been silenced by the dominant culture. It is this reasoning that prompts Rudyard Kipling to suggest that one way to tell a truth that, if told as truth, would be censored or disbelieved is to tell it as a lie, as fiction.

For example, True History of the Kelly Gang by Peter Carey blurs the distinction between truth and fiction - the text purports to present Ned Kelly's life story, which he has written for his daughter.

On one hand, the text appears to be an authentic autobiographical text, drawing upon reality effects to make this appearance convincing. The text is similar to the genre of 'true histories', such as Swift's Gulliver's Travels or Defoe's Robinson Crusoe. True History is introduced by a seemingly reliable and unbiased editor commenting on the material he assembled, "thirteen parcels of stained and dog-eared papers, every one of them in Ned's distinctive hand" (4). Told in first person, the narrative mimics the uneducated language, incorrect grammar and punctuation that would likely have been Kelly's, giving the illusion that Kelly's voice is uncensored. Even if Kelly detours from his autobiographical recount, his narrative is supported by the authority of others: "I do not recall anything about the fight but it has been 50 times I heard Joe Byrne tell the story thus as follows" (204). Excerpts from newspaper reports are coupled with reference numbers to the Melbourne Public Library, ostensibly giving the appearance of authenticity. However, no such library exists today - Carey acknowledges that he edited various genuine reports for inclusion in the text. Kelly repeatedly insists on the truth of what he says, seeking to set the record straight against the lies spread about him: "this history is for you and will contain no single lie may I burn in Hell if I speak false" (5).

However, although the narrative purports to be a true account, presenting fictions as truths, it is nevertheless a novel by a contemporary author of fiction, who is basing this fiction on a true story. Thus, some aspects of the story are factual but presented within the conventions of fiction. Scenes of megalomania suggest that the text is fiction: the police are "actors in a drama writ by me" (348), the commissioner is "my puppet on a string" (382) and the authorities are "captives in a drama devised by me" (382). The invention of the daughter for whom Ned writes the story employs a time-hallowed literary device in which the novelist claims he is merely the editor or publisher of an autobiographical manuscript discovered years later. Because this device is so conventional, it points to its fictionality rather than enhancing the authenticity of the narrative.

The literary conventions that allow a fiction to be recognised as a fiction are merged with the literary conventions that signal a non-fictional account.

Therefore, in True History of the Kelly Gang, the narrator, Ned Kelly, produces his narrative as a true narrative, in line with what Derrida suggests in Given Time: "Counterfeit Money". However, True History differs from the fiction described by Derrida in that with respect to True History, it is not as clear that the narrative is fictive between Carey, the author, and the reader. Throughout the text, Carey employs various techniques that blur the distinction between truth and fiction - thus, the simulacrum produced by Carey is inextricably interwoven with truth. Rather than "convention permitting us to know - [Carey] and us the readers - that this fiction is a fiction", Carey twists the literary conventions that signal fiction and truth, so the reader cannot know what of the fiction is fiction and what is truth. Thus, arguably, True History more closely approaches Derrida's formulation of the operation of counterfeit money because it is not presented to the reader as a fiction, but as, perhaps, truth.

Furthermore, the title of Carey's work divides into two referential directions, as Derrida discusses with respect to "Counterfeit Money":
 

  The title, in effect, gives one to read, gives itself as saying or wanting to say the following (perhaps), and such would be its intention: 'Since I say and name and denominate so many things at once, since I look as if I am entitling this while at the same time, taking back with one hand what I give with the other, I entitle that in addition, since I feign reference and nomination, since my reference, as fictive, is not truly a reference, not the right one in any case, since it is indeed a reference but it remains illegitimately titled, since its referent is not necessarily what one thinks it is, well, then I, as title, am counterfeit money.' But it obviously does not say that, otherwise it would discredit itself; it says it without saying it…; it overruns the order of assured propositions or autopropositions…; otherwise there would no longer be any possible counterfeit money. (Derrida 98)

 
The title "True History of the Kelly Gang" exemplifies this. While, as a title, it necessarily says "Here is what I am, I do not lie or I do not lie in saying I lie" (Derrida 98), thereby entitling itself, it nevertheless refers to a fiction, a novel, which will not, by convention, be true.

Thus, True History is perhaps a story about the Kelly gang (conventional implication of title of a novel, similar to a "story about counterfeit money") or perhaps the story about the Kelly gang is true (similar to the reference that "the story is counterfeit money").

Arguably, then, a metafiction that self-consciously blurs the distinction between truth and fiction more closely approaches Derrida's formulation of counterfeit money. Unlike in other texts, the conventions evident in a metafiction cannot be relied upon, because it is the very nature of a metafiction to distort and reshape these conventions. Such a text has the potential to deceive the reader that fictional elements of it are true; unlike Baudelaire's "Counterfeit Money" which the reader knows is fiction due to literary convention. Although a metafiction does not embody the criminal intent to deceive implicit in counterfeit money, the phenomena are closely aligned - fiction is passed off as truth and potentially dupes the reader not merely the narrator.

Siobhan Doherty
 

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