The fictional element of political modernity is concretized in the Fantasy of the WestfantasyFantasy of the West. What we call “the West” is not simply a geolocation but is a particular kind of empirico-transcendental doublet that confers on the West a peculiar dual positionality. Composed of both aesthetic and epistemicepistemic elements, this dual positionality enables the West to arrogate for itself an Imperial PrerogativeImperial Prerogative that provides both an alibi for the crimes committed in the management of transitions and a unique status as the site for convening judgments about the political legitimacy of transitions. The Episteme of the West is thus a device for managing transitional modernitymodernity according to the normative standards of The Universal TransitiontransitionUniversal Transition. The “WestWest,” a relational concept of area, and “humanity,” a speciesspecies concept describing the populationpopulation of “area,” form the subjectivesubjectsubjective root of genocidegenocide—the apparatusapparatus of area and anthropological differencedifferenceanthropological difference. Much of even the most critical work in Genocide StudiesGenocide Studies is based on an implicit, conceptual defense of the Episteme of the WestWest, couched in the presuppositions of the apparatus of area and anthropological differenceapparatusapparatus of area and anthropological differencedifferenceanthropological difference and in the residual, colonial division of labordivision of labor in knowledge production.