Scarred Bodies’ Fierce Beauty

Randy Kennedy describes the work of artist Ted Meyer, who focuses on the scarring of the body, as a “Fierce Beauty” in a recent article in the New York Times (October 4, 2006).  More on the exhibit itself can be found here.  Is this a refiguring of aesthetics (the nature of the beautiful)?  Is “fierce beauty” a provocation? a denial of beauty? Does aestheticizing scarification somehow diminsh its visceral impact?  Or is this a new topography of the body?  And how do we respond in terms of desire, or our investments in the body and body politics?