This introduction outlines a project that seeks to transform the feeling of “severance”—a profound disillusionment with the political and epistemic structures that constitute the “West relation”—into an intellectual framework for epistemic decolonization. Inspired by the work of Michel Foucault, the author argues that modern genocide is intrinsically linked to an aesthetic ideology of speciation. Applied to the inherently relational quality of the “West,” the act of severance is not aimed at specific properties or characteristics thought to typify a certain region or civilization identified with the West but rather at the abstract social apparatus rooted in colonial–imperial modernity that organizes social relationships through the aesthetic ideology of speciation. Introducing concepts such as the “apparatus of area and anthropological difference,” this chapter draws attention to how Area Studies perpetuate aesthetic and epistemic conditions that enable genocidal violence, while also examining the role of mimetic secrecy, isolation, and exteriority in maintaining Western hegemony. The text further touches on contemporary cases such as Gaza and the discourse around Uyghur genocide, suggesting that meaningful severance requires a radical reorganization of knowledge production and a rejection of the West’s imperial prerogative to legislate the rules of political transitions and their enforcement.