Extract from what was going to be "Estates General of the Quotation Market"

"(...) Quotation marks generally function as small clothespins meant to keep at a distance, without really touching them, clothes which, whether dirty or still wet, won't be freed from their clothespins and really touched until they are properly clean and dry. In this case, the quotation marks around "theory" far from keeping an impure concept at a distance, convey a distrust towards a concept which is pure from any contamination and from an absolutely reappropriable proper sense: the proper sense of the word "theory" and "theory" as determined by the telos of proper sence which would elude quotability or, more generally, general iterability (...)"
quote / un-quote
Source: Derrida, J., Some statements and truism about neologisms, newisms, postisms, parasitisms and other small seismisms, in The states of 'theory'