Structure

The author organizes Constructing a Nervous System into eight numerical chapters. None of the chapters is titled. However, these familiar structural divisions are only superficial containers for Jefferson’s patchwork of explorations and examinations. Indeed, the text lives in a fragmented and fractured form, linking a series of seemingly disjointed yet component parts from start to finish.

The reader might refer to passages from Chapter I in order to understand how Jefferson is using her form and structure to enact her lifelong search for identity and self. Throughout the majority of her adult life, Jefferson says, “I’d felt that to become a person of complex and stirring character, a person (as I put it) of ‘inner consequence,’ I must break myself into pieces—hammer, saw, chisel away at the unworthy parts—then rebuild. It was laborious. Like stone masonry” (4). Over the years, once the edifice of...