[msla]

> Why do you think all ideas that need to be taken seriously should be provable, provide solutions, or, indeed anything other than the author's own sense of alienation?

Because they're part of the Social Sciences.

> This isn't science and doesn't purport to be.

Well, it certainly purports to be.

[pron]

> Because they're part of the Social Sciences.

Critical theory? No. It's more part of the humanities.

> Well, it certainly purports to be.

Absolutely not. Why do you think that? Even many actual social scholars (historians, anthropologists) would object to being called scientists, or, at least, would always emphasize that if you want to call what they do science, it is not science in the same sense as chemistry.

[msla]

Them using the term "theory" while not doing any of the hard work of science is equivocation.

[pron]

They're doing hard work, just not scientific work. It's not "better" or "worse" than science; it's just something completely different. Science doesn't have a monopoly on the word "theory". It's been in use long before science (at least as we know it since the 17th century) existed.

[msla]

> They're doing hard work, just not scientific work. It's not "better" or "worse" than science; it's just something completely different.

It's amazing how much of this would apply to alchemy, or astrology, or religion.

So the question becomes, why would anyone pay attention to it?

[pron]

Why would anyone pay attention to science? It all depends on what you want to achieve and what your values are. The difference between alchemy and literature is that alchemy purports to have the same goals as science -- at which it fails -- while literature has completely other goals.

[msla]

I'm not talking about literature. I'm talking about critical theory, which is not the same thing, and is a much later innovation.

Literature has proven itself useful. Critical theory has not.

(Also, I notice you didn't distinguish what makes critical theory different from religion.)