you can to some extent, its not like you couldnt throw an emulator designed for one architecture to one with a subset, as its already shown on the PS4 for example that you could throw dolphin and cemu on a ps4 running linux. (not that it would run nice, but its possible).
its only harder if youre trying to do it in the base OS necause the base OS is usually lacking a graphics API rather than it be a hardware issue itself that presents problems. Its why jokingly people are saying the Xbox Series may be able to run PS3 soon beccause dev mode was updated with Mesa, which includes support from both opengl and vulkan. And alien hardware isnt usually always the issue, given random devices are capable of pf running Sega Saturn, which on its own lile the PS3, had extremely unique hardware