Dialectic of Enlightenment deserves the label Adorno gave the Missa Solemnis: “alienated masterpiece.” With only one modification, his comments on Beethoven's celebrated and misunderstood composition can express the reception accorded Adorno and Horkheimer's work: “Every now and then … it is possible to name a work in which the neutralization of culture has expressed itself most strikingly; a work … which occupies an uncontested place in the repertoire even while it remains enigmatically incomprehensible; and one which … offers no justification for the [abuse] accorded it. As Adorno observed with respect to the Missa Solemnis, “to speak seriously” of Dialectic of Enlightenment today “can mean nothing less than … to alienate it.” Here, however, alienating the work does not require one “to break through the aura of irrelevant worship which protectively surrounds it,” but to disrupt gestures of easy dismissal that prohibit a thoughtful engagement, at a time when debates about globalization increase its significance.